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frugal technology, simple living and guerrilla large-appliance repair

Regular blog here, 'microblog' there

Many of my traditional blog post live on this site, but a great majority of my social-style posts can be found on my much-busier microbloging site at updates.passthejoe.net. It's busier because my BlogPoster "microblogging" script generates short, Twitter-style posts from the Linux or Windows (or anywhere you can run Ruby with too many Gems) command line, uploads them to the web server and send them out on my Twitter and Mastodon feeds.

I used to post to this blog via scripts and Unix/Linux utilities (curl and Unison) that helped me mirror the files locally and on the server. Since this site recently moved hosts, none of that is set up. I'm just using SFTP and SSH to write posts and manage the site.

Disqus comments are not live just yet because I'm not sure about what I'm going to do for the domain on this site. I'll probably restore the old domain at first just to have some continuity, but for now I like using the "free" domain from this site's new host, NearlyFreeSpeech.net.

Sun, 12 Jan 2014

Could the kernel-devel package be the thing preventing AMD's Catalyst from installing in Fedora 20?

Update: Thanks to tips from Bernhard J. Wolf, I have successfully installed the AMD Catalyst 13.11 beta driver in Fedora 20. I did not need to use Maxorete's install-file hack. When I opened the file that needed to be changed, it looked like AMD had already made the fix -- and since Catalyst did install, I can confirm that they did. Thanks, AMD! Keys to success were adding the kernel-devel package in Fedora. It probably couldn't hurt to make sure you also have kernel-headers, which I already had. Bernhard also said the installation wouldn't work with GNOME installed. GNOME, you are now history on this machine. With kernel-devel and without GNOME, the install of AMD Catalyst 13.11 beta went like butter. I will do a new post that contains all of this information, but for now I leave what I wrote earlier today in its original form below. You know, for history's sake:

Original post below (I didn't need the install-file hack)

Anybody who has read anything I've written in the past month know that the sudden absence of the AMD Catalyst driver in packaged-for-Fedora form is really chapping what's left of my Linux hide. The fact that so few seem to care is just stamping my "get out of Dodge/Fedora" ticket.

But given momentum's pull, principally the fact that I have Fedora set up the way I want it, I'd rather stay for now and move at some time in the future. When I'm ready, that is.

So I've gone against the advice I've held to since Fedora 14 crapped out on me, that advice being, Don't install Catalyst directly from AMD.

Read the rest of this post

Fri, 03 Jan 2014

From ReadWrite: Online Privacy: We Are The Authors Of Our Own Demise

Online Privacy: We Are The Authors Of Our Own Demise by Matt Asay. The subtitle: We used to pay with money. Now we pay with our private data. Will we regret it?