Technology

Tio: Maybe if we cant do the same for AUR then after TROM-Jaro is released and we show it to the world people will like it so much that they will help out with doing it for AUR as well. I will promote TROM-Jaro on Manjaro forums and other Linux portals. btw if anyone who reads this message can help please contact me ;)

Tio: Now I managed to properly integrate the script into TROM-Jaro so that you can install apps from tromjaro.com. Unfortunately I still do not know how to make this for AUR packages. Basically now I will be able to make it as easy as click install from tromjaro.com but only for Manjaro repositories, which means it is limited to apps tested by the Manjaro team. that not super bad, but I wish I can do this for AUR as well. Still fuckin' happy to see this working. It will be an amazing feature that I didn't see on pretty much any website. Here's a screenshot from the website - that install button WORKS with TROM-Jaro!

Tio: I am now working on the solutions part for the book + final review of Dima's Entertainment book + TROMjaro.com + trade-free.org website. All of these are "positive" things. I had enough of the negative things :D

Tio: Kostas recently shared TROM in Greek on his FB page here https://www.facebook.com/politismos1/videos/400067940773471/ he has many likes and engagements on his page. great guy Kostas! He is trying to promote TROM on his page more and more. He also put me in contact with some people about translating the entire TROM project into Greek. Awesome stuff!

Tio: I am DONE with the negative part of the book! Yes! yes yes yes! I really had to take that off my chest! I may have repeated some things but I felt I had to do it. I had too many notes and I ddin't want to ignore them. I feel such a big relief....now I am ALL about SOLUTIONS. Cannot wait to start on that! Gogogogogogo :)

Cody: TROM is live and decentralized on the IPFS through Bit.tube! This means that if you watch trom and it's related videos @ bit.tube/trom , the project is paid for your viewership in the form of airtime! Which ultimately means money (boo!) for the TROM project to progress! There are NO ADS and the cost is what you were already going to do on youtube anyway! O did I mention YOU also make currency for watching? You can send it to us and support the project further, or keep it for yourself. Either is truly fine!=) This is just an easy way for the project to open another potential source of income that's even BETTER for EVERYONE! =D

Tio: Stream here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XClYPAqzT9M - really good one I enjoyed it :)

Dima:

Tio: 14.5k words for the book. 2.5k more since the last update a few days ago. making damn good progress. i think 2.5k more words and i am done with the negative part. man this is crazy. you will get tired reading the many examples i give in regards to "look, this society is not working - laws do nothing". anyways, tomorrow is the tromcast. discussion: language. interesting. dima, seb, tio, rafa are joining so far. maybe more ;)

Tio: oh and I didn't buy the .com one, like i buy all websites, because for one it is not available and second, the .org is used by "free" or non-profit organizations, and we want to reach those with this new project, so it fits perfectly! :P

Tio: I just bought www.trade-free.org !!! Awesome that I managed to buy it. great domain name :P - there we will post the new documentary + organizations that stand behind this idea! It will be like the Free Software Foundation find of thing, the "go-to" place for this trade-free idea! ;) - lots of plans friends! lots! ok, back to writing the big book!

Tio: oh, and I made it in Inkscape! the trade-free software, or TFOSS like we will call them: Trade-Free and Open-Source Software. A nice addition to the well-known FOSS :P

Tio: I think I made a really bad-ass logo for our Trade-Free project/focus. Like I love it :D - I would even tattoo it haha. I am preparing things for our new endeavor: the big book, trom-jaro, the documentary, the trade-free idea itself and how to promote it. the only thing that could really fuck things up now would be a brain tumor or to get hit by a car :))

Tio: Ok so TROM-Jaro I think is kinda done. The Operating System is now slim, beautiful, simple and it just WORKS! No point in pre-installing tons of apps. I installed the essentials and made it "ready" - like firefox is set up to stop as much as possible todays's trades: ads or trackers or data gathering. videos, photos, or audio files work. basically any filetype works. you get basic libreoffice for documents with several packages installed for many languages. and that's pretty much it. I made it simple and trade free, removing the stuff Manjaro added to it by default, and I installed several stuff so to make it more powerful. We will rely entirely on tromjaro.com to suggest applications in a beautiful and simple manner so that anyone can customize their TROMJaro any way they like it. From now on in terms of TROMJaro the focus is the website which is also pretty much done from a basis perspective. I have it set up and the core of it is designed. Need to build the pages and add several applications, then all I'll be doing is to add more and more applications. These are trade-free applications that I am going to test. Btw just to give you a small example of what I mean by TROMJaro being "ready" and that it just works: in Linux there are several package types, like "exe" is on Windows in Linux you get several. In Manjaro (thus TROM-Jaro) we rely on a database where you can find all applications and you simply click install and that's it. Super easy. No "one format" there but multiple. However there are some newer formats like snap, appimages, or flatpak that are trendy nowadays. They are simple to install but that's if you install some other stuff beforehand and you use the terminal. In TROMJaro everything is set up to accept such packages as well. Like, in very very rare cases when there is no Manjaro format available for one app but it is as appimage, then you simply double click and appimage and it gets integrated into TROMJaro. That's how easy it is. Want to install snap? Install it like you would install a snap without installing anything more than that. Flatpak? The same. IT JUST WORKS! LOVE IT! :) And here it is the TROM-Jaro https://www.dropbox.com/s/h9td6yrj7zszoip/TROM-Jaro 11-02-19.iso?dl=0 2.1GB - not much will change to it. basically that's what it is going to be!

Tio: So I am getting closer to finish up the "negative" side of the book but I started to feel drained a little. Like I am sick of the "negative" aspect. But then, if you don't know about that you don't understand how "solutions" can look like. If you want to showcase the negative side of today's society you can write nonstop until the end of your life and you won't even touch 1% of it all. The challenge for me is to put all that in a simple to understand and non-boring manner: both in writing and book design. But this book will be the most important factor for the new documentary! We will extract the essence of it for the documentary. I am also working in parallel on TROM-Jaro. Some days, maybe because of the subjects I research, I feel quite down....but most days I feel great and motivated to do this kind of work. Today was a "feeling-down" day.

Tio: making great great progress with the book! 12k words already :D - that's like the entire TROM Earth book and I am not done at all. I think I need some 5k words to finish up with the "bad" side of it to then more to the "good" side of it. But lots of interesting stuff. Like if you ever wondered what is the global impact of Mafia + Terrorism + Gangs + Smugglers, wonder no more. I had an overview look at it and the fight to stop them, globally. I am very surprised.

Yoav: Hello!
There's a site called AlternativeTo, which lets people look for certain kinds of apps, and alternatives to specific ones. I'm going to add all TROM tools there, so hopefully more people will find them, and be helped by them. Currently TROM curated news and ViedoNeat pages are up. if you want, you can can vote, review, and suggest it/similar apps as alternatives, and even edit the information (you just need to create an account which is very simple and quick). this will help people find them. here are the pages -
Curated news https://alternativeto.net/software/trom-curated-news/
VideoNeat https://alternativeto.net/software/videoneat/reviews/
I will post the pages for other TROM tools in the following days, cause it takes them time to get approved

Tio: Added several youtube channels to our curated videos - good ones ;)

Tio: You can see the TROM-Cast recording here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk9B-csiAdM

Tio: I wasnt able to share the jitsi link here :( .... I was too busy with the livestream and my computer kinda crashed because of so many Firerfox tabs....next time will be more organized

Tio: Live in 5 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0MJgMfb0TE&feature=youtu.be

Tio: Tio, Cody, Rafa, Seb will participate. Maybe Sasha as well....and maybe others too? Will see :)

Tio: The livestream will be here https://youtu.be/b0MJgMfb0TE - in about 5 hours

Tio:

Tio: We've got a new question to our FAQ: "Do have material on a well designed adoptable alternative to trade along with a rollout strategy?" - answer is here https://www.tromsite.com/faq/

Yoann: I translated another part of the documentary in French. Still plenty of stuff to translate! I'm also working on several other projects. Really busy at the moment :D

Tio: Since I started researching "mafia" and organized crime all around the world I now can confirm with a lot of confidence that LAWS DO NOT WORK! Period! You won't believe the stories behind this subject...you'll get to read about a bunch of them in the book though. I also realized that "terrorism" is not ISIS, terrorism is everywhere from Colombia to Italy. I mean fuckin' Italy is full of Mafia and terrorism attacks but you don't hear about them like you hear about ISIS. Crazy shit. But eye opening. Today I hope to finish up with the Mafia part.

Tio: On LiberaPay (the kinda trade-free alternative to Patreon) https://liberapay.com/explore/organizations we are the 7th most supported organization :D - thank you! https://liberapay.com/TROM/

Tio: Thank you to those who support TROM on Patreon, Paypal, and Liberapay! These people who donate every month/week are the ones that are keeping this project still running after 8 years! So, thank you so so much! Maybe some of these have stressful jobs, maybe they don't have enough money, maybe they are sick by the trades they have to engage into, and yet they decide to help TROM. We can only guarantee that we keep on doing the same quality work that we've been doing over the years. In our next TROM-Cast (in 2 days) we will discuss about TROM, our TROM Meeting in Spain this year, our plans to make more videos, the new documentary, and so forth! You will see that there are a bunch of people who are quite active with the project and we have some plans to move together and work more on the project, if we have enough financial support. "tune-in" on 07, 19:00 UTC to hear more about our plans ;) - and if you can support us financially please do so here https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ even 2-3 euros a month, if 10-20 people donate, is a lot of money.

Tio: Did some work on TROM Curated news. Added a few sources to it and the curated search engine. In about a month or two I will restructure tromsite.com in a better way to showcase all the tools we have built over the years!

Aaron: I wrote 2 Articles (in german): one about Free and Open Source Software in general (what is it, why is it so awesome): https://aaronboos.de/2019/02/was-ist-foss/ and the other one about how to install the latest version of our FOSS operating system TROM-Jaro on your own computer to test it :) https://aaronboos.de/2019/02/trom-jaro-installieren/

Tio: And of course we can simply translate tromjaro.com in so many languages :P - I need to think of how to give access to people to translate properly in multiple languages. But it is very possible! We grow! I like it!

Tio: 05:00 some guys on Manjaro forum were able to make it possible to click and install an app from a website. how awesome! still....the AUR packages do not seem to work maybe it is a small tweak they have to do. For it to work we need to set up some small stuff to TROM-Jaro by default. Not hard it seems. But well imagine how awesome could be to have those bunch of trade-free apps and people can click and install them, just like that, from tromjaro.com :D - i love the idea!

Tio: Only 2 more documentaries to see for this part of the book :P - also worked on tromjaro.com a bit and actually made great progress. I want a page with tested and recommended trade-free apps - you click one and opens a popup with details and images about it (very brief) and you can simply search it in tromjaro's software center and install. HOWEVER I am talking to people from Manjaro's forum and maybe we can implement an "install" button that triggers the software center and it installs the application. How could would that be to install apps from tromjaro.com? :D - will see, but even if we can't implement that it will be an amazing website with hundreds and hundreds of trade-free apps. Here is a very early demo of the website (functional) - I will add lots and lots of tags so that you can find any app you desire :P

Tio: Today I also have to watch 1 series (4 parts) and 1 more documentary. And tomorrow one more documentary (made up of 2 parts). For the book!

Tio: Today I kinda learned how to do a custom TROM-Jaro set of icons. I will contact some people I know to see if they can help with custom artwork for TROm-Jaro. Custom icons, custom wallpapers. The theme that we use is already great so I don't think we need to change that. I honestly cannot wait to release TROM-Jaro, but I want to do a damn good job at it, like I feel doing for everything TROM related.

Tio: I installed wordpress on http://www.tromjaro.com/ and I will try to work in parallel with writing on the big book. Won't prioritize it for sure, but in my "spare" time I'll work on it. It will become like an "app center" with recommended trade-free apps for TROM-Jaro, on top of explaining TROM-Jaro itself. I want for people to go there and find hundreds if not thousands of tested trade-free apps for TROM-Jaro. And I would love to add new apps all the time because I love testing new Linux apps. Of course it will be integrated with our TROM Curated News so every time we add an app to tromjaro.com will go to TROM Curated News as well + will integrate tromjaro with TROM Curated Search Engine so that if anyone searches for applications they can sort by "trade free". Ok, lots of plans, and exciting ones :P

Tio: Watched 4 documentaries today. Well, one that had 3 parts (45 min each), and 1 that was 1h 30 min. I need to watch another series (with 4 parts), one series with 2 parts, and another documentary that's 1h 30min long. Give me 2 days and I'll watch them all haha. It is for the particular point of the book I am working on. Also, adding a new VN doco now ;)

Tio: You have to understand that I have notes taken from many months ago about this part, from the tens of documentaries I've seen and stuff I've read. I am now coalescing everything. I am still yet to go through the 200+ bookmarked websites....but is happening....let's see.....am I able to finish writing the book this month? I doubt...but will see.

Tio: Analyzed mafia/drug cartels and organized crime for the book for pretty much all the world except US and Italy. These ones are huge. I am analyzing them these days. I am also watching 2-3 documentary series about the topic. When I am done with Mafia (I hope 1 week), I go a bit through smugglers and hackers. I am analyzing law-breakers. I really hope by the end of this month I am done with this part. This is the last thing staying between me and the "solutions" part. I know that I am postponing the solutions part, but that part is the easiest since I worked on that for the past many months. I LOVE the fact that I feel again "trapped" by my workflow on the book. That's the state I like to be in ;) - engaged into research and writing books.

Tio: Basically UnderstandingMore, Seb's project, will unite with TROM :D

Tio: I am video-excited! Some really cool stuff in terms of videos will come :) - thanks to Seb! So much interesting TROM stuff happening lately. The TROM-Cast, the new TROM videos that we will post, TROM-Jaro, people translating stuff, us meeting in May, etc.. Overwhelmed!

Tio: Live here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhmaTOmVh90 join here meet.jit.si/tromcast password tromsite

Tio: I contacted the hosting company about the server space and we figure out there were some old backups on the server. Deleting them now. But so far so amazing, almost 50% of the disk is now empty!

Sasha: I put a link to "the ugliness of beauty" in my latest blog post- https://www.bigworldsmallsasha.com/single-post/2019/01/31/For-the-Love-of-Ice-Bubbles

Dima:

Tio: My workflow for The Origin of Most Problems at the moment: before I jump into the "solutions" part I am going to present why and how laws are not working and I am presenting the "bad hombres" of this world so that people understand how millions of people are breaking every single law. I am going through mafia and gangs....and MY GOD it is endless. I am trying to select the most telling examples but I feel like it is never ending. I hope to finish going through this in about a week. I am looking for each and every country :D - I read a lot but write a little. I simply cannot control myself and I want to REALLY know stuff. I don't want to simply say: "Look man, mafia or gang members and organized crimes are breaking the laws because of trade every single day." - this is tasteless and no one will understand the severity of it. People need examples! Else is a sound-less message. Ok, back to work!

Tio: Our VPS server disk space is getting lower and lower...but it is too expensive to buy more (for now). Maybe it is because we host our books on our server and they are really big + the ones that are translated.

Tio: Oh haha :D - ok thanks for the correction!

Sasha: Not planning on releasing it this year :P I really have no idea how long it will take so I can't promise anything

Tio: Another TROM-Jaro update. I fixed a few more things. Not much more to fix. I also cleaned it up and reduced its size to 2.1 GB which is awesome. It is much faster to build now. I CANNOT wait to start and build tromjaro.com. It will be wonderful!

Tio: To clarify, this is not a TROM book, but Sasha's personal book ;) - she always talks about TROM in her blog posts and now in her book that she plans to release this year :P

Tio: Thanks Sasha for talking about TROM in your book about your adventurous life and journeys :D

Sasha: So it turns out that writing a book is a lot harder than writing a bunch of blogs, who ever would have known :D I’m 63 pages in deep now. Here’s a little glimpse of where I mention TROM.

Tio: The "vanilla" version of TROM-Jaro with only the minimal apps and the same settings, is around 2.4 GB. Almost half the size. I like that! Oh jeez it is 6am....I messed up my sleeping "schedule" again. But then, if I think about it...what are days? A human invention :P

Tio: Wow big update ! Also, I am so happy to see others posting here about their work on TROM. I am so happy!

Tio: So I spent the past 5 hours understanding how to add the missing applications to TROM-Jaro, and I managed to do it, but I won't. A brief explanation. Manjaro is based on Arch. It is like a Linux operating system built on top of another. This is the beauty of open source, you can re-build stuff with what others have built. Now, Manjaro did lots of custom stuff to the operating system and one thing most Linux distributions (distros) do is to create what is called as "repository". This is basically a server (a website) where they put these packages and people can install them from there easily. An application is nothing more than a piece of code wrapped in a christmass wrapper. When you want to install it you are basically instructing your operating system to unwrapped it and build what's inside the package. Maybe it is a giraffe, maybe it is a car, maybe it is simply a deck of cards. Whatever is inside that package is what is important. In Windows you have the "exe" as the package. Problem is this exe is very messy when you open it - you make a mess (next, next, yes, install, where, now?, agree?, next, next). You also have to find this package online on all kinds of websites. So it is a complete mess. In Linux people put these packages in one single place and check them to see if they are good or not. Think of it like a warehouse. Everything is sorted in categories here. Arch has such a warehouse, Manjaro has one, Ubuntu has one, but the difference between them is mainly in the package wrapper because mainly they are the same. Ubuntu has "deb" instead of "exe" for example. So back to Manjaro. They have their own warehouse - we call that the "repository" (remember?). But they are a small team so they can't put lots of packages there because these packages need to be properly tested and maintain. This means "limitation". Ubuntu suffers from this since their repositories lack lots of new software. But Manjaro is making use of AUR. This is Arch User Repository - this is like a public warehouse where any user can add packages for the Arch based Linux distributions. AUR is perhaps the largest warehouse in the Linux world. It has pretty much every piece of software. So Manjaro relies on their own repository but they also allow you to enable AUR. So you can install packages from any warehouse you choose thus allowing for a huge variety of applications. Software from AUR is not tested on Manjaro, but since Manjaro is based on Arch pretty much 99% of the applications there work. Manjaro disables AUR as default but it is super easy to enable via their Software Manager. This is the beauty of Manjaro, their Software Manager that makes their repository and AUR work together. So for any Manjaro user to install any application is as easy as opening the Software Manager, type (and search) any application and click install. That's all. No use of terminal, no searching the web for an application. Ok, so back to TROM-Jaro: I want to make this Operating System customized in a way that is both trade-free and super functional and packed with the best Linux apps in the world. Manjaro pre-installs microsoft office, steeam, and I think skype - these are not trade-free! So I did everything except that I cannot pre-install AUR applications very easily. To do that I would have to create my own warehouse and maintain it. This is insane considering I have so much work to do already for TROM. I learned how to do this, I tested, but it is too damn hard. But I realized something in the process: do not make TROM-jaro bloated! Not everyone needs the apps I added there and I added too many! So, my idea now: rely on customizations that make TROM-Jaro easy and great to use (so customizations to the operating system) and then rely on tromjaro.com to recommend apps in a beautiful way. When people install TROM-Jaro they will be faced with a sleek, fast, and "ready" operating system. When they openFirefox for the first time they'll see tromjaro.com where they can go through our recommended apps and install any that they want/need! This way people install ONLY what they need! ;) - And this way we can recommend new apps all the time. Imagine if I would discover a great new app....what now? Rebuild TROM-Jaro again for one single app? That's nuts! But in this new way I can simply recommend it on tromjaro.com and anyone can install it in a few seconds. I like this new idea!

Gia: I just finished my first translated video into Romanian. It took me around 5 hours spread across 2 days, that is around 2-3 months of work (3 hours a day) to finish the entire 14 hours documentary. hahaaa seems like a lot of work but I won't give up ;)

Yoann: Hi there, I'm currently trying to study what led trade-free/RBE supporters to see the world and our society the way they do. I also try to finish the French subtitles of the TROM documentary, but as Gia said, it can take 3 hours to translate 10 minutes of video, and we still have close to 5 hours of video to do. After that, I'll start translating new books! I'm so looking forward to start translating books again, I had enough of subtitles haha. Aaron just gave me the idea to start trying to find French scientific sources of any kind to add to the curated news on the French version of the website. More things to do... I love it! :D

Dima: Joined TROM and realized that I am the largest pessimist here :) Besides that, today we've tested OBS studio on my (trom-jaro) PC, and I will host next TROM CAST this Thursday. On the optimistic note I hope that my internet connection will be good enough :D :D HA HA !!! let's pray for that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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