Since moving to EndeavourOS, one weird thing that popped up is that the default KDE wallet (which is needed for a few things, like storing nextcloud login) requires unlocking. I have tried creating a new wallet with the same password as my computer, which worked to auto-unlock the wallet in Fedora, but not in EndeavourOS. Is there something I need to configure to have the default kde wallet to unlock on login?

Using large instances kind of defeats the points of the fediverse, so I would like to move away from the matrix.org homeserver. What are solid Matrix homeservers that works well? Preferably ones hosted in Europe rather than the U.S. for lower latency.

My little laptop server is already full of other stuff and is slightly struggling hosting a bunch of other stuff (Nextcloud, Immich, Minecraft server), and I only have it exposed to my local network (since I doubt my ability to securely selfhost something exposed to the internet and don't have the time to deal with DDoS, bots, crawlers, etc) so am not looking to self host my own Matrix instance.

edit: I have decided to go with matrix.glasgow.social

Everybody knows about the backstory, there was a civil war, KMT fled to Taiwan creating two Chinas sort of, maybe, neither recognises the other, whole thing. ROC (Taiwan) ended up transitioning from military rule to a multi-party democracy, while the PRC (mainland China) didn't do that (they did reform economically, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and all that, but still a one-party state, not a multi-party democracy). The status quo right now is that Taiwan is in the grey area of statehood where they function pretty much independently but aren't properly recognised, and both sides of the strait are feeling pretty tense right now.

Taiwan's stance on the issue is that they would like to remain politically and economically independent of mainland China, retaining their multi-party democracy, political connections to its allies, economic trade connections, etc. Also, a majority of the people in Taiwan do not support reunification with China.

China's stance on the issue is that Taiwan should be reunified with the mainland at all costs, ideally peacefully, but war is not ruled out. They argue that Taiwan was unfairly separated from the mainland by imperial powers in their "century of humiliation". Strategically, taking Taiwan would be beneficial to China as they would have better control of the sea.

Is it even possible for both sides to agree to a peaceful solution? Personally, I can only see two ways this could go about that has the consent of both parties. One, a reformist leader takes power in the mainland and gives up on Taiwan, and the two exist as separate independent nations. Or two, the mainland gets a super-reformist leader that transitions the mainland to a multi-party democracy, and maybe then reunification could be on the table, with Taiwan keeping an autonomous status given the large cultural difference (similar to Hong Kong or Macau's current status). Both options are, unfortunately, very unlikely to occur in the near future.

A third option (?) would be a pseudo-unification, where Taiwan becomes a recognised country, but there can be free movement of people between the mainland and Taiwan, free trade, that sort of stuff (sort of like the EU? Maybe?). Not sure if the PRC would accept that.

What are your thoughts on a peaceful solution to the crisis that both sides could agree on?

edit: Damn there are crazies in both ends of the arguments. I really don't think giving Taiwan nukes would help solve the problem.

I think the current best solution, looking at the more reasonable and realistic comments, seems to be to maintain the status quo, at least until both sides of the strait are able to come into some sort of agreement (which seems to be worlds away right now given their current very opposing stances on the issue)

edit: I have gotten used to simply enabling the shuffle and adding my songs when I start up rmpc. Interestingly enough, when you press play with randomise on, it selects a random song just like that! Much faster compared to selecting the first song before enabling randomise, then using the hotkey for going to the next track to get a random song.

Having the speakers muted by default means loud music won't be broadcasted to everyone when my headphones disconnect, and that works well enough for me given that I don't regularly use my laptop speakers anyways.

original post:

I love MPD and RMPC, it's probably the closest I have gotten to a "perfect" music player, it is super customisable and functional, but there are just a few things that I need to figure out how to change.

First, after each restart, the queue is cleared. How do I make sure that the queue by default is all the songs in my music directory?

Second, after each restart, shuffle (randomise) is reset to off, how do I change it so that shuffle is enabled by default?

Thirdly, is there a way to make MPD pause when headphones are disconnected?

Finally, how do I make MPD block screen lock when music is playing?

For your information, I am running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma

My main requirement is that I am using Syncthing to sync my notes from my Android phone, which uses Quillpad. Quillpad is amazing and looks super nice, and functional too, but all the notes are in one big folder rather than being subdivided by notebook. So I require a markdown editor that can create "notebooks" but don't change the folder structure of the notes (I tested putting notes in subfolders, and quillpad thought the notes were deleted. Silly Quillpad!)

So the notebooks/similar organisation of notes needs to be specific to the app and should not change the folder structure. I would prefer if the app is open-source too, and something that fits with my desktop (KDE Plasma) would be cool too :D

~~This rules out Obsidian (which puts notes in a folder structure. Obsidian is great, but won't sync well with Quillpad)~~, Joplin won't work either. Ghostwriter is pretty much a markdown notepad (quite good, but can't see all my notes in one place)

I am using EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma

edit: To clarify, I want a markdown editor that is able to separate notes into different groups without using folders as Quillpad doesn't like folders. I also need to have a way to view all the notes at once in each group

Using a code editor VSCodium wouldn't really work as there isn't really a way to organise notes, aside from putting them in folders (which I don't want), and I am not yet ready to jump into the Vim rabbit hole of plugins and configuration

edit 2: Markdown editor to note organiser to satisfy the pedant

edit 3: Looks like Obsidian has tags, so I could use those to organise notes without folders. I will try that and see if it works!

edit 4: Obsidian does have tags, but it seems like you sort by tags by typing tag:#NAME, and you can't use spaces for tags. So not Obsidian then unfortunately. Are there any other options that have a larger focus on tags or similar?

This would be great if you wanted to talk to yourself without anyone understanding what you're saying, for example, or if you didn't want anybody to know what you were writing down. It might also be useful if you enjoy lots of foreign language media (see music, tv shows, movies) and want to experience the "original" rather than through dubs and subs.

Personally, I would go for either Russian, German, or Estonian, all three of which are because I frequently listen to lots of music that are in those languages

edit 2: Found a video by "SpaceRex" on the differences between BTRFS and EXT4, super helpful! He explained it quite well...

edit: It seems that there isn't much difference between btrfs and ext4 aside from additional features of btrfs, which although I might not need right now, there doesn't seem to be any harm in using btrfs over ext4, so I will be using btrfs.

Which would be better? Fedora shipped with btrfs, does it have any additional features that are good (quick search shows compression, subvolumes, and snapshots as main selling points for btrfs, but are there any downsides?

update: Using the tar command, I have created a tar archive that respects symlinks, so there aren't any duplicated files, hooray! Now I will go install EndeavourOS, wish me luck!

I was told that I might be able to get help in a dedicated community. I am using rsync to backup my home directory to an external SSD (I will rsync the other way later, this is because I will be reinstalling to a different distro). My laptop uses btrfs while the SSD uses exFAT. When sending files over, file sizes are WAY bigger, the home directory is around 385 GiB and there is over 700 GiB of free space, but it was unable to fit midway through transfer. I partially solved this by uninstalling problematic programs, like Steam and Kdenlive (which can be reinstalled later) and removing large files that I didn't need. Some of the bulk is also due to fit repos it seems (someone said those have loads of links or something?)

The external SSD has files already on it that isn't part of the home directory backup for distro hopping, and it will be used by Windows users (my family) so I can't reformat it. I might buy another external SSD for this purpose if using exFAT to backup is a real problem.

Now that I have successfully transferred my home directory with barely any space to spare, I have a few additional questions:

Once I reinstall and distrohop, will the symlinks come back when going from exFAT to BTRFS or are they gone forever and I'm stuck with massive files?

Will there be any additonal incompatibilities when copying the home directory from exFAT to BTRFS?

Is it safe to use an exFAT drive as a backup for the home directory, or is it better for me to wait until I can get an external SSD that I can reformat to be btrfs?

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/41202990

update: I was able to copy it! There are still some folders that are really big (as many have said, it is probably because symlinks aren't supported in exFAT. When I transfer these files over to btrfs, will the symlinks come back or are they permanently gone?) but, with the uninstallation of Steam and Kdenlive (each taking a ridiculous amount of storage), removing a couple games I don't really play, and removing old folders that lingered around from already uninstalled programs means I now have enough space to fit my home folder in the SSD (like 23 GiB left, so the lack of symlinks still hurts, but still, it fits!)

When running

rsync -Paz /home/sbird "/run/media/sbird/My Passport/sbird"

As told by someone, I run into a ran out of storage error midway. Why is this? My disk usage is about 385 GiB for my home folder, and there is around 780 GiB of space in the external SSD (which already has stuff like photos and documents). Does rsync make doubly copies of it or something? That would be kind of silly. Or is it some other issue?

Note that the SSD is from a reputable brand (Western Digital) so it is unlikely that it is reporting a fake amount of storage.

EDIT: Wait, is it because my laptop SSD is BTRFS and the external SSD is exFAT? Could that be the issue? That would be kind of weird, why would files become so much more bigger with the external SSD?

update 2: The Linux community has suggested that I use a tar file to backup, as this preserves symlinks. With that, the home directory now takes up just 290 ish GiB, as it should. Now I will be distro hopping, wish me luck!

update: I was able to copy it! There are still some folders that are really big (as many have said, it is probably because symlinks aren't supported in exFAT. When I transfer these files over to btrfs, will the symlinks come back or are they permanently gone?) but, with the uninstallation of Steam and Kdenlive (each taking a ridiculous amount of storage), removing a couple games I don't really play, and removing old folders that lingered around from already uninstalled programs means I now have enough space to fit my home folder in the SSD (like 23 GiB left, so the lack of symlinks still hurts, but still, it fits!)

When running

rsync -Paz /home/sbird "/run/media/sbird/My Passport/sbird"

As told by someone, I run into a ran out of storage error midway. Why is this? My disk usage is about 385 GiB for my home folder, and there is around 780 GiB of space in the external SSD (which already has stuff like photos and documents). Does rsync make doubly copies of it or something? That would be kind of silly. Or is it some other issue?

Note that the SSD is from a reputable brand (Western Digital) so it is unlikely that it is reporting a fake amount of storage.

EDIT: Wait, is it because my laptop SSD is BTRFS and the external SSD is exFAT? Could that be the issue? That would be kind of weird, why would files become so much more bigger with the external SSD?

Thanks everyone for your help to troubleshoot! It was super helpful! Now I need to go to bed, since I've been up so late it's already tomorrow!

I would like to distro hop to EndeavourOS, and it has been suggested that I use rclone to copy my home folder to an external SSD. Unfortunately, I don't have an external SSD at the moment, but I do have a phone that has plenty of free space. Is it a good idea to back up my computer files to an Android phone? My gut says it's not a very good idea, but I'm not sure why.

Hello everyone, does anyone know of a batch resizing tool on Linux that can resize loads of images all at once while keeping all the images the same aspect ratio as before? I would like to make all my images in a game have either a width of at least 128 px or height of 192 px (e.g. an image that is 700x875 would resize down to 154x192px, so that width is > 128 px and height = 192 px. I think for most of the images resizing based on height will work, but you never know!)

edit: I have used a for loop that cds into each directory, uses imagemagick to resize all of them to fill/overflow area 128x192 with ^ tag and using morgify to modify in place, then cd back to the parent directory! Thanks everyone

Here are some bad puns that are to do with data types. I'm sorry. Comment down some of your own concoctions!

2. What does a programmer say when they is accused of lying? I promise I'm not boolean you!

3. You try to pay with $100 of Monopoly money. in a supermarket. The cashier tells you that it's unfortunately not real.

4. What would you call fuel made of alphabet soup? CHARcoal!

5. How do Japanese programmers read arrays? By decrementing from -1!

not related to data types, but just came up with it as I was typing this:

f. What did the Python user say to the C++ user when they spilled coffee on their laptop? OOPs!