Ok so I DID IT! I moved from TROMjaro Gnome to TROMjaro XFCE. I will make an article, maybe tomorrow, about how anyone can do it.

Look...I do a lot on my laptop. I have at least 4 workspaces and an extra display, 20TB of files, millions of them in number; I sync my servers with my drives (millions of files) daily; then backup them to other drives; I work on a huge documentary in Kdenlive (project file is over 1.2TB in size); I build custom linux images (tromjaro) and need to test images all the time; I test linux apps for our app library so I have hundreds installed; I sync my photos over 3 drives and a phone, and all merge into 1 single gallery...I have chats and emails, 5 firefox windows each with tens of tabs; I sync files via syncthing with my friends... Trust me I do a lot. I use symlink folders/files and so much more.

So to do the switch and reinstall another OS is crazy to me. Need to make all of this maze work. And I managed to do that in some 5-6 hours or less. I take that as a proof that linux is awesome. And if I could do it, without using the terminal basically, then anyone can. Click and do.

So basically XFCE is super fast and really cool. Only a few things annoyed/annoy me:

1 - The fact that workspaces extend to external displays so you get a fuck ton of workspaces that are kinda useless. That's not how I work. I had to come with a solution for that. It is not that great but is fine. Drag and drop windows between workspaces is something I may not do anymore because of this. But I came up with a solution: using mouse gestures. I have 4 workspaces and I setup it so that when I draw a number between 1 and 4 over a window, it will move it to that particular workspace. That's crazy fast and so cool. Say I have a window in front of my screen and I wanna move it to workspace 4. I draw a 4. Done!

This is done via the Window Tweak Manager and Mouse Gestures. No terminal and such.

2 I am annoyed by the fact that Thunar, the file manager, sucks when it comes to searching files. Good news is that they have kinda fixed that so I am waiting for the update.

I think that's it. The rest seems great. I am so tired hahaah...

Also TROM II project file seems good. All working. Cannot wait to get back to work on it! Now with global menus and HUD. How fucking awesome!

#tromlive

DB Error: Unknown column 'network-thread-view.uri-id' in 'where clause' 
DBA::selectToArray, Network::getItems, Network::rawContent, call_user_func, Module::run, App::runFrontend 
SELECT * FROM `network-item-view` WHERE (`unseen` = 1 AND `gravity` = 0 AND `uid` = 2 AND ((`contact-id` = '7704') OR EXISTS(SELECT `uri-id` FROM `post-user-view` WHERE `post-user-view`.`parent-uri-id` = `network-thread-view`.`uri-id` AND (`contact-id` = '7704' AND `gravity` = 3 AND `vid` = 7 AND `uid` = 2)))) ORDER BY `received` DESC LIMIT 100

DB Error: Data too long for column 'url' at row 1
Media::insert, Processor::storeAttachmentAsMedia, Processor::storeAttachments, Processor::updateItem, Receiver::processActivity, Receiver::processInbox, Inbox::rawContent, call_user_func 

INSERT INTO `post-media` (`uri-id`, `type`, `url`, `mimetype`, `height`) VALUES (1772025, 16, 'magnet:?xs=https%3A%2F%2Fvideo.blast-info.fr%2Flazy-static%2Ftorrents%2F5db5a5a7-932f-449e-9163-2a0066acdca1-720-hls.torrent&xt=urn:btih:ffcb895c28be069315e5ca9b7dfb6c7481e8a5be&dn=CRISE+FINANCI%C3%88RE+%3A+VA-T-ON+PERDRE+NOTRE+ARGENT+SI+LES+BANQUES+S\'EFFONDRENT+%3F&tr=https%3A%2F%2Fvideo.blast-info.fr%2Ftracker%2Fannounce&tr=wss%3A%2F%2Fvideo.blast-info.fr%3A443%2Ftracker%2Fsocket&ws=https%3A%2F%2Fvideo.blast-info.fr%2Fstatic%2Fstreaming-playlists%2Fhls%2F5db5a5a7-932f-449e-9163-2a0066acdca1%2F5db5a5a7-932f-449e-9163-2a0066acdca1-720-fragmented.mp4', 'application/x-bittorrent;x-scheme-handler/magnet', 720) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE `uri-id` = 1772025, `type` = 16, `url` = 'magnet:?xs=https%3A%2F%2Fvideo.blast-info.fr%2Flazy-static%2Ftorrents%2F5db5a5a7-932f-449e-9163-2a0066acdca1-720-hls.torrent&xt=urn:btih:ffcb895c28be069315e5ca9b7dfb6c7481e8a5be&dn=CRISE+FINANCI%C3%88RE+%3A+VA-T-ON+PERDRE+NOTRE+ARGENT+SI+LES+BANQUES+S\'EFFONDRENT+%3F&tr=https%3A%2F%2Fvideo.blast-info.fr%2Ftracker%2Fannounce&tr=wss%3A%2F%2Fvideo.blast-info.fr%3A443%2Ftracker%2Fsocket&ws=https%3A%2F%2Fvideo.blast-info.fr%2Fstatic%2Fstreaming-playlists%2Fhls%2F5db5a5a7-932f-449e-9163-2a0066acdca1%2F5db5a5a7-932f-449e-9163-2a0066acdca1-720-fragmented.mp4', `mimetype` = 'application/x-bittorrent;x-scheme-handler/magnet', `height` = 720

home timeline is no array

twitter_sync_run

Tested TROMjaro XFCE on my main machine via the live usb. First of all...the beauty of Linux to be able to test it like that. Everything seems to work great. Function keys, my hardware, and so forth. Snappy and fast. Now the way it handles the external monitor I have is a bit weird, different than what I was used to. You see I use my external monitor almost like a "tv", where I stream videos from our tromnews.com and such. Basically a Firefox window with such goodies + when I need to add some file manager window or such windows that I need to work in parallel on two screens.

And my laptop is where the work is done. And I use at least 4 workspaces: my main one with the servers and such, TROM II one with Kdenlive, the file manager, and so forth; TROMjaro with our git, virtual boxes, and so forth; and VideoNeat with whatever I need for it. Workspaces are amazing and I am amazed not many seem to be using them. But they are great cause you can focus on one project at a time.

Now in XFCE the external monitor also has workspaces and are glued to the main display....so say I am watching a very nice video from tromnews.com while doing some CSS fixing to TROMjaro on the TROMjaro workspace. If I switch to another workspace then my external monitor also switches and I lose that nice video I was watching. The way around it is to make that Firefox window from my external display "visible on all workspaces" - right click and do it.

Anywas, from my tests I can fix these small personal inconveniences. XFCE is somewhat different from Gnome in many regards, so maybe getting used to it is even better. Embrace the new!

Probably tomorrow I'll do the switch :D. I need a relaxed mind and time to make sure I can properly switch and not lose any of my files.

#tromlive

The servers' apps backups archives are about 120GB. The files are about 700GB. The backups for the apps are synced daily with my local machine. So I download 120GB daily. Then the files are synced incrementally to the same machine and now they are about 2.2 MILLION files.....takes some 10 hours to sync since it has to read the timestamp of each file in order to know what files need to be updated. Then the backup archives and the files, are mirrored to another external HDD.

All in all these backups take a long time and a lot of storage space. The greatest offenders are Peertube for file storage, although the core app is only 2GB in size, but the files are about 600GB. However Friendica and Matrix are by far the greatest offenders in terms of the number of files, over 1.5 million I'd guess. These are thumbnails, media files, and such. The Matrix server has a 10GB database already, same as Friendica.

Is this scalable? I guess it is. If this gets too crazy I'll stop backup the cached thumbnails for Matrix and Friendica since these are the ones that take up so long to sync due to being so so so many of them. Maybe will do so for thumbnails for Peertube as well. After all these backups are just in case of a fatal failure of the server. And if that happens we can deal with generating the thumbnails again for Peertube and the like....

#tromlive

Today I installed TROMjaro XFCE on another laptop that had TROMjaro Gnome. This laptop was using a little maze of file syncing with Syncthing + FreeFileSync, so that photos from other computers synced automatically on this laptop, then to an external HDD, then picked up automatically by Shotwell. Same with a phone sync. In essence if the person got some photos/videos from friends via Syncthing or took photos via the phone, they will all coalesce in Shotwell. Neat!

This laptop was also connected most of the time to an external monitor that was used as the main monitor (so lid should be closed all the time). So it also had an external keyboard and mouse.

The experience:

Booting to the live usb was a breeze. Testing it was perfect. All worked, all keys, everything. All smooth. Installing was super fast. All worked great. No issues. Bringing back the files to this machine and settings + apps is always time consuming regardless of the OS.

Bringing back the apps + settings + databse sync issue:

You have to know what apps you had installed and install again, and this was the first bump: there is a issue with TROMjaro XFCE, and this may be a Manjaro/Linux thing, but despite the fact that the Software Manager showcased the available apps (so I can easily install them), as soon as I tried to install then I was faced with a sluggish Software Center that was refreshing all apps and dependencies....that took some 20 minutes. I had to close it at one point and then do a manual Database Refresh via the same Software Center. Luckily that took a minute or two. After that all worked ok and I could install the apps.

AUR banning the IP:

Another weird issue I saw in Manjaro a few times too, was the AUR banning your IP so then you can't find any AUR packages. The ban is temporary. Luckily we have a trade-free VPN. Click it and all works fine. In a day or so the ban is removed and stays removed.

Multiple monitors confusion:

First, I was disappointed to see that there is no way to make a panel available on multiple screens in XFCE. I thought it can mirror a panel...on Gnome you could that that via the Dash to panel plugin. You can tho, create a new panel for the external monitor and add the items back to them + settings. It is not pretty but is fine.

The way you deal with the monitors is interesting, you can add them on top, bottom, sort them as you want. That's very cool. You can even expand panels across monitors - idk if that's useful.

I did ran into an issue: I wanted to close the laptop's lid but keep the laptop running so that it works via the monitor. No setting allowed me to do that until I manually edited a file in the root directory. That fixed it. It took me some 20 minutes to deal with the monitors situation...

OVERALL:

The issue with the software center can be a bad one to deal with....new users will be confused by that. The upside is that once it syncs the database it works no problems afterwards. The issue with the monitors and restoring the apps' settings and reinstalling the apps, is kinda normal on most Operating Systems.

TROMjaro XFCE performed really well today with my tests. So overall it was a very good experience even with the above errors/glitches that some are normal with many OSes.

#tromlive

I think I found a proper livechat for our livestreams :D . It is directly working from our website itself, and you need to account. We will use it for our next tromcast. We may have to do tromcast in a bit of a different way so we make sure it properly works. There 2 issues with our peertube instance of peertube in general:

• The proper way to livestream is to livestream and have the video auto save in your account + convert. Problem is, this is buggy and stops the stream after 1h or so.
• Because of that we had to do our previous streams without the conversion, but we ended up reuploading the casts to convert them, so the url changed, and we would delete the original stream url. But that also stopped working...

And in general if your connection drops (for whatever reasons), then the streams interrupts and that's it. It is done!

The solutions: permanent live.

The way I streamed last time was to create a permanent stream. This is it - videos.trom.tf/w/81mQvysgPGp9G… - this has the same URL all the time, and whenever you stream it will start the video. Being a permanent live it won't stop. Because if your connection drops you come back to the same URL. The downside is that we will have to record the casts and upload after. But considering points 1 and 2, then this is ok. We already had to do that...

In this new way I am pretty sure all livestreams will go through and not fail + it is easy to implement this into tromsite.com/live with a chat.

So yah. The thingy is already setup. I will make it public tomorrow. #tromlive