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Think globally, microblog locally
Thu, 31 Dec 2015

Fedora upgrades DO happen overnight -- with 7000+ tasks between upgrades and cleanup, I just let it run. F23 now lives on my laptop

Wed, 30 Dec 2015

Upgrading #Fedora 22 to 23 -- 3654 packages for me

Easy instructions for Fedora 22 to 23 upgrade from Fedora Magazine https://fedoramagazine.org/upgrading-from-fedora-22-to-fedora-23/ I needed --allowerasing

Starting the #Fedora 22 to 23 upgrade -- can DNF really do it?

Tue, 29 Dec 2015

You know what I'm using like crazy in Xfce? Clipman http://www.mylinuxrig.com/post/1441513640/clipman-helps-remember-what-you-cut

http://dlvr.it is one of those services that keeps plugging along. It runs my @twitter feed out of this blog, and my company uses it, too

Mon, 28 Dec 2015

.@realdonaldtrump and @passthejoe (that's me) joined @twitter about the same time - 2009. Sure, he has more followers, but I just crossed 1K

Unearthed my circa-1980 Next Whole Earth Catalog, the web before the Web http://www.amazon.com/The-Next-Whole-Earth-Catalog/dp/0394707761

Sun, 27 Dec 2015

Ornette Coleman remembered by Neneh Cherry aka @misscherrylala http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/27/ornette-coleman-remembered-by-neneh-cherry-jazz-saxophonist

Sat, 26 Dec 2015

JDK 1.8 for OpenBSD http://openports.se/devel/jdk/1.8

OpenBSD 5.8 looks very good http://www.openbsd.org/58.html Even offers JDK, which I don't remember from 4.4 days

Great introduction to @OpenBSD at http://www.openbsdjumpstart.org

Tue, 22 Dec 2015

Was prepared to hate Netbeans, but I kind of like it

Mon, 21 Dec 2015

Go's net/http not fast enough? Fast HTTP is up to 10 times faster https://github.com/valyala/fasthttp #golang

Fri, 18 Dec 2015

At this point, I've probably been running Fedora a lot longer than I ever ran Debian.

I am following too many people on Twitter. That is all.

Confession: I love reading Penelope Trunk. Her subject (life and work) is compelling, as is what I think is her brutal honesty http://blog.penelopetrunk.com

Researchers say iPod Touch is the most secure mobile device due to lack of SIM card http://www.zdnet.com/article/want-a-secure-privacy-smartphone-the-experts-suggest iPhone is second-best

7 reasons to develop your next web app with @meteorjs http://www.sitepoint.com/7-reasons-develop-next-web-app-meteor from @sitepointdotcom

Thu, 17 Dec 2015

Mumble returns to @Fedora https://fedoramagazine.org/mumble-returns-fedora

Sat, 05 Dec 2015

Perl is Back and Ready to Roll with the Big Data Crowd http://thenewstack.io/perl-back-ready-roll-big-data/

Fri, 04 Dec 2015

Spam spam spam spam http://www.zdnet.com/article/spam-whats-yours-is-mine-book-reviews-the-loss-of-internet-innocence/

Wed, 02 Dec 2015

@pragdave on @elixirfountain https://soundcloud.com/elixirfountain/elixir-fountain-2015-09-25-dave-thomas

Saša Jurić: Why #Elixir http://theerlangelist.com/article/why_elixir

Clark Kampfe: #Elixir is not #Ruby http://zeroclarkthirty.com/2015-11-01-elixir-is-not-ruby.html

Jerel Unruh: Why I'm excited about #Elixir and #Phoenix http://jerel.co/blog/2015/11/why-im-excited-about-elixir-and-phoenix

#Elixir School http://elixirschool.com/

Tue, 01 Dec 2015

Aaron Lebo: The UNIX philosophy and Elixir as an alternative to Go http://lebo.io/2015/06/22/the-unix-philosophy-and-elixir-as-an-alternative-to-go.html #elixir #golang

Mon, 30 Nov 2015

Geek News Radio is about to begin http://sixgun.org/geeknewsradio @geeknewsradio

Wishing @MethodDan a speedy and full recovery http://danlynch.org/blog/2015/11/wheel-of-fortune

Thu, 19 Nov 2015

A great list of GNOME Shell extensions from @reddit

Thu, 12 Nov 2015

44 degrees at 5:30 a.m. in Van Nuys

Wed, 11 Nov 2015

Facebook vs. Tsu -- it's complicated http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival-social-network

What is Tsu? A social network that shares revenue with users http://www.tsu.co/about

Mon, 09 Nov 2015

Learn development skills with Outlearn https://www.outlearn.com

Learn Go From Scratch https://www.outlearn.com/learn/matryer/golang-from-scratch #golang

Why Meteor will kill Ruby on Rails http://blog.differential.com/meteor-killin-rails

Sun, 08 Nov 2015

The Go Cookbook http://golangcookbook.com #golang

Wed, 04 Nov 2015

I am very interested in this book: 'Learning to Program' http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Program-Steven-Foote/dp/0789753391 #JavaScript

Fri, 30 Oct 2015

I just installed Groovy http://www.groovy-lang.org #groovylang #java

Modern Programming Made Easy - A Simple Guide to Programming by @adamldavis https://leanpub.com/ModernProgrammingMadeEasy #java #groovylang

.@Leanpub is extremely refreshing - the concept, the web site and the books http://leanpub.com

Book: Ambitious Ember Applications - An Ember.js Tutorial https://leanpub.com/emberjs_applications by @ryakh #EmberJS @leanpub

Building Web Apps With Ember.js, a book from @oreilly http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030782.do

EmberWatch http://emberwatch.com #EmberJS

Ember.js, as it's called, 'a framework for creating ambitious web applications' http://emberjs.com

7 reasons to use Ember.js from @codeschool http://blog.codeschool.io/2015/10/26/7-reasons-to-use-ember-js

Meteor.js is a full JavaScript app platform https://www.meteor.com not that I haven't mentioned this already

Wed, 28 Oct 2015

First chapter of The Go Programming Language: http://www.gopl.io/

An Introduction to Programming in Go, the free book: https://www.golang-book.com #golang

ZDNet: Why I dumped my iPhone 6 and went Android http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-i-dumped-my-iphone-and-went-android

ZDNet: Record number of Android users switch to iPhone http://www.zdnet.com/article/5-reasons-a-record-number-of-android-owners-have-switched-to-iphones

I want GNOME to be better than Xfce, but it's not

I answered a Linux question on Quora.

In the interest of running my own writing on my own site, here is what I said.

The question:

I want to revitialise my old Windows 7 laptop with Linux. I want to use this as an excercise in learning about Linux too. The laptop is a Samsung RV 510. What distributions could I consider?

My answer:

Try whatever strikes your fancy, as they say. Back when I was getting started with Linux (around 2007), every distribution I tried taught me something. Puppy, Debian, Ubuntu (and Xubuntu), Fedora, CentOS (I ran versions 2 through 5 at the time), Damn Small Linux, Knoppix, Slackware, Wolvix (a favorite Slackware derivative of mine) and Zenwalk all showed me something different and taught me something I carry with me today. I never did much with Mint or anything with Arch (though it has the best wiki in Linux), Gentoo or OpenSuse, but I do recommend them, too.

I also spent a lot of time with OpenBSD, which I ran as my main system for six months (installed from a floppy because I couldn't get the CD-ROM to work on my trash-bin laptop at the time) and less but very productive time with FreeBSD and DragonflyBSD.

I even ran Solaris on a Sun Sparcstation I bought over eBay.

I don't distro-hop nowadays. On my last laptop (2010-2012, RIP), I started with Fedora because I find that new hardware works better with its newer bits. When I "broke" that system, I moved to Debian and stuck with that until the laptop died.

On my current laptop (since 2012), I started with Fedora 18 and have been sticking with it ever since (now on F22) with Xfce. I love Fedora, but I still consider Debian my "home" distro, even though I appreciate the new everything that Fedora constantly brings to the table.

Since I use Linux as my daily OS and don't distro hop, I go for what's practical and what works for me. That's Fedora with Xfce right now but could just as easily be Debian or Xubuntu.

Linux distributions are more alike than they are different. That's the "secret" that you might learn (or at least I did) when you try a lot of them.

Whenever you try Linux on "new" (either really new, or new to you) hardware, you're going to need to be flexible. One distribution might work better than another, and another might need more work on your part. Your desire to do that work also matters, and I can tell you that I've stuck with Fedora for so long on my current laptop because it has worked so well for so long. There are always issues, and my laptop is at the point in its life where Debian Stable treats it quite well, so I might go for the "stability" that it offers (which is really more "not changing," than "works better," so if it works, great; if not, not so much).

tl;dr: Try it before you buy it. And since it's all free, you've got nothing to lose and everything to learn.

Now and then: I'm adding this after the original post to clarify how I went from distro-hopper to what I am now, which is a person who rides the same distro as long as possible.

What changed was that I started relying on my Linux-running computer to safeguard my real data. And it needed to work every day, every month, etc. So I go with the "big" distros, and I make them work.

Sunrise is a calendar app on pretty much all platforms - blog: http://blog.sunrise.am get started: https://calendar.sunrise.am

Tue, 27 Oct 2015

Jeff Atwood: The state of JavaScript on Android in 2015 is ... poor https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-state-of-javascript-on-android-in-2015-is-poor/33889

Mon, 26 Oct 2015

Decided to run GNOME 3 today. While everything is working, it's not smoother or better than Xfce.

Fri, 23 Oct 2015

I'm getting all of these great links from Green Ruby News http://greenruby.orguni

.@mattermosthq is like @slackHQ except it's open source #golang #reactJS http://www.mattermost.org

MadEye is a collaborative web editor backed by your filesystem https://madeye.io/