05.05.2020

On top of the usual updates of the system that come mainly from Manjaro and are available for all current users, we changed the following:

• Fixed a few small bugs such as the Gedit text editor was by default highlighting the “current line” and it was doing it with a white color over white text, making it impossible to read. We deactivated that. Current users got the change via their software center.
• We enabled ‘Ctrl + C’ and ‘Ctrl + V’ for the terminal – just an easier way to copy paste into the terminal. The change was pushed to all users.
• The ‘No Topleft Hot Corner‘ Gnome extension was removed since now the Tweaks app allows users to do just that: to deactivate that hot corner. Just click the above link and remove it. The change for Tweaks was pushed to all users.
• We changed the file browser to sort folders before files and do not show by default the hidden files and folders. Again, the change was pushed to all users.
• We changed the default favorite apps (only for new users that will use this ISO) to be as follows: Firefox, Files, Notes, and Add/Remove software. We think these are the most used and useful apps for newcomers.
• In ‘Backups’ (or Deja Dup) the default ‘saving location’ was Google Drive. We changed that to ‘local’. We don’t want to advertise such trade-based companies. Unfortunately we could not remove Google from there but we contacted the developers and as soon as we know how, we will do it.
• Speaking of that in Settings, under Online Accounts, you could see Facebook, Google, and the like. This is a feature in Gnome to quickly allow users to connect with their online accounts. We finally got rid of that and removed all of these trade-based services and only kept 2 that are trade-free. The changes were pushed to all users.
• We improved how we handle our icon theme. You see, we make new icons all the time but it takes a while for the developer of the icon theme to push the updates into the official release. Therefore from now on we will push all of the new icons into the new ISO releases by simply copying all of our original icons into the folder ‘Home/.local/share/icons/zafiro-icom-theme/apps/scalable‘. It is a quick fix for now and we may create a package to do this automatically for all users so that they get access to the latest icons that we make. For current users you can do that by simply downloading our icons from lapha, and copy them all in the above folder (if you have no such folder, create it). If you need any help, use our live chat.
• In Fierfox we improved a bit the Speed Dial page (added a few new links and icons for all links) + we replaced the Addon ‘Go to Sci-Hub‘ with ‘Sci-Hub Now!‘. It seems that such Addons that offer trade-free access to scientific articles get removed or are removed from Firefox’s Addons (or stop working), so we need to fix this almost every release.
• In the Dash to Dock extension we set it up so that on scroll, you can circle through multiple windows of the same app. This should be pushed to all users as well.
• We are constantly improving the default TROMjaro experience (for new users) and the default settings and apps are always a priority. We are therefore looking for the best, simplest and most functional default apps to ship TROMjaro with. Now we have changed a few:

  – We replaced GNote as our default note taking app, with FeatherNotes. After testing many notes taking apps, FeatherNotes seems best suited for now. It is super easy to use for anyone, supports basic text formatting, auto save, import images, search and replace, zoom into text, and more. We did some tweaks to make it integrate better with TROMjaro. If you want to, you can also use our tweaks. Copy this folder into your ‘Home/.config‘ folder.

  – We replaced Kazam as the default screen recorder, with Peek. Kazam is not developed anymore and it was a bit buggy on some systems. Peek is actively developed and it is dead simple to use for anyone who want to quickly record an area of their screen and save as video or gif.

  – We replaced Audio Recorder with Sound Recorder, because the latter seems to work better and is more simple.

Overall there are not very many changes, mostly bug fixes and maintenance. And that’s how we want TROMjaro to be. To not change as much. To be a stable and recognizable OS and let the users customize it as much as they want to. The default apps are the main changes we may do in the future, to make sure that out of the box newcomers can use TROMjaro for most of their tasks without installing anything.

A small note: one of the Gnome Shell extensions that we use, Unite, has a bug with the little top tray icons you see in the right side of the screen, and in some cases it may render them in a bad way. The bug is reported lapha and we hope the developer will fix it soon.