Brickfrog

When I first started using GNOME the top bar was a bit off-putting but I got used to it TBH. It’s not something I think about much nowadays.

However, you actually can move it to the side or to the bottom, and/or change it in other ways, with the dash-to-panel extension so definitely check that out if the top bar is bugging you https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/

Just curious was this a Tuta paid account, or a free one?

Tuta is very strict with the free accounts and flag them for all sorts of reasons. They take their time to “approve” free accounts just to be able to use them. And on top of that they might nuke your account anyway if they think it is being used for spam/illegal activity/whatever or they think it’s not being used.

But I thought those are just issues with their free accounts, presumably their paid accounts don’t get flagged for those things… or so I thought.

Also to echo the other comments - best to buy and own your own domain for your email, that way it doesn’t matter where the email is being hosted in case you need to switch email providers.

Windows To Go was discontinued back in 2019 so it’s not really something that has been maintained or updated for a long time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go#Discontinuation

Apps like Rufus (Windows only) are still able to create that sort of boot USB but it’s sort of a non supported feature, wouldn’t be surprised if it just stops working one day.

On Linux Ventoy is often used for this - it does have a persistence plugin but not for Windows https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_persistence.html

I haven’t tested this idea, but maybe you can run a Windows VM within Linux, enable USB in it, download Rufus in it, then you can create your non-official Windows To Go boot disk that way? Could be something to try if you never find another solution.

Minor update, I edited my original comment above. The app does seem to work with Jellyfin 10.11.1.

Maybe I’m not the best test candidate LOL… I usually use the Android Jellyfin apps for music so my original test was with a Jellyfin user with only music libraries enabled… Findroid does not like that apparently. Once I logged in with a user with TV/Movie libraries enabled it seems to load and play video.

I don’t normally use that app but I figured I could do a quick test for you - the stable version (0.15.3) does not seem to work on my end. It does connect to the Jellyfin server (10.11.1) but nothing loads after that.

It doesn’t look like findroid has had any stable releases in over a year so it may indeed be showing some incompatibility issues.

EDIT: Re-tested, it does seem to work as long as you have video libraries enabled on the Jellyfin user (e.g. Movies/TV). My earlier test was with a Jellyfin user that only has Music enabled, I did not know Findroid does not play music. (most of my Jellyfin mobile use is for music)

Always good to double check, but yes, I used canyouseeme and the port is definitely open.

That means TCP should be working as expected with the current configuration. Note those port test websites are only testing TCP, not UDP.

A few menu options below the one for port forwarding

I’m not familiar with ProtonVPN configuration so can’t guide you much there, presumably if the port forwarding option only allows for one setting then maybe it’s doing both TCP/UDP? I dunno…

there’s another for configuring the connection as OpenVPN(TCP), OpenVPN(UDP), or Wireguard.

Don’t worry about that one, that’s for configuring the VPN client you will be using to connect to the VPN server. It should not affect the port forward itself unless ProtonVPN is doing something odd.

I’ve had other issues in the past and Transmission’s internal port testing thing

Yeah I wouldn’t rely on that, the internet port test inside the torrent client isn’t always reliable. But in theory it should show up as open all the time if you have a stable open port :/

Could I be missing a step with the trackers?

Doubt it being a tracker issue, they update themselves on their own schedule usually.

I also have a client I’m trying to test uploading to, but it can’t seem to connect to the seedbox

Maybe should have asked this before - can the test torrent client see that there is a seed on the torrent? Or does it load the torrent but just isn’t seeing any seeds or peers at all? The open trackers take a bit to update themselves with a new torrent hash so sometimes it just takes a bit before the torrent client sees a seed and begins downloading from it.

Just to double-check did you already test that the open port is actually open and connectable from the internet? e.g. use any port test website & see if it can connect to your seedbox Transmission open port e.g. https://www.canyouseeme.org/ , https://portchecker.co/ or similar.

Also, not sure how the open port itself was configured but make sure it is open for both TCP and UDP traffic if you needed to specify that during your firewall setup.

Like some of the other comments, if you really need a DE then maybe give XFCE or LXQt a try. The distro itself won’t matter too much in your scenario.

I do have an old laptop that has run Debian/Ubuntu + Gnome fine, not at all fast but usable for my needs. Mines has 4 GB RAM, get the feeling that going under 4 GB may be a bit much.

Otherwise Linux is perfectly usable without a DE if you’re willing to stick to the terminal for all your usage.

Like Google Fi, it’s a VoIP (voice over internet protocol) service so coverage should be the same as Fi.

Strictly speaking Google Fi is a MVNO. After losing Sprint/US Cellular access a while back nowadays they are a T-Mobile reseller e.g. you’re getting access to T-Mobile’s network and coverage with Google Fi.

For what it’s worth my Google Voice phone number does show up as being classified as a VoIP number so that might be more along the lines of what you’re thinking. The phone number I have on Google Fi does not show up as VoIP.

There is an Linux compatible open source player being developed called fooyin (https://fooyin.org/) heavily inspired by foobar2000. When I tried it out a few months back it was still a bit rough for day-to-day use but it could eventually become a good alternative for people that miss the foobar2000 style player.

Pretty sure Strawberry does everything you are looking for.

re: #1 I kind of had the same issue but with multiple music folders, most of the default music apps only let you use one folder. Strawberry lets you add as many music folders as you like, I’ve been happy with it.

On Windows I used to use foobar2000 which was great, and in theory I could get it running under Linux, but I’d rather just use something coded for Linux compatibility from the start.

Working fine here, the app connects to the Jellyfin 10.11.1 server over the internet without issue.

I’d suggest maybe double-check and make sure you still have a port forward from the internet to your Jellyfin server? Usually for me when the app gets stuck trying to connect it’s because it can’t see and connect to the Jellyfin server for some reason. Also in the 10.11.0 release notes they did mention that they removed the ability for the Jellyfin server to auto port forward so it’s possible that affected you? See https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/releases

Other random idea: Maybe somehow the data for your app got messed up? You can reset it and make it start fresh by bringing up its App Info (long-press the Jellyfin Android app), go to Storage & Cache, once there clear the storage and cache. When you re-attempt to launch the Jellyfin app it’ll start fresh and need you to re-enter your Jellyfin server details.

I still use Virtualbox, configuration is way easier with the GUI

To be fair you can pair KVM/qemu with any GUI manager and have a similar interface to VirtualBox/Hyper-V/VMWare/etc. virt-manager (https://virt-manager.org/) is a popular one for example, I just started using it and it seems to work well for what I need.

Normally I’ve been using VirtualBox but for whatever reason it asks me to recompile the kernel on Debian 13 just to launch. Meanwhile qemu just works.

Don’t know if this helps you but did you already try changing Disk IO Type to Simple pread/pwrite (in advanced settings)? It was meant to address some issues with disk read/write + RAM usage. Not something that affected me all that much but could be worth a look.

Was mentioned in the 5.0.1 release notes and in the github pages

https://www.qbittorrent.org/news

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/pull/21300

Beyond that I’d echo the other comment, try to just change settings you actually need to change. Oftentimes people make a whole ton of settings changes in their torrent client and then can’t figure out how to get it back to normal.

Not quite what you’re asking but if you buy your music on Bandcamp (or just have a Bandcamp account) you can “Follow” artists there. That tells Bandcamp to send you email alerts every time that artist releases an track/album on Bandcamp.

It’s one of the main ways I find out that new music gets released and it sort of works since I was probably going to buy it at Bandcamp anyway.

https://interviewfor.red/

https://interview.orpheus.network/ (might not be doing interviews right now per the other comment)

Never needed to use this but have seen that tools like https://github.com/fedarovich/qbittorrent-cli are able to export lists of loaded torrents in various formats, it might do what you want.

e.g. if you’re going to load the output in LibreCalc then you probably want to export a list in csv format most likely (the project’s wiki mentions it https://github.com/fedarovich/qbittorrent-cli/wiki/Output-Formats).

so when choosing which content to purge, I want to just sort by Ratio in qBittorrent and start purging anything older than 30 days that isn’t getting uploads. The problem is, more often than not I’m cross seeding the same content across multiple trackers, so although a specific torrent on a specific trackers may be performing poorly, that doesn’t mean the same content isn’t performing well on another tracker.

Something to consider for the future, you could re-work how you are storing your torrent data and hardlink all those cross-seeding torrents in their own folders. So if you do a full delete of one torrent + data it won’t actually affect the torrent + data of other torrents. If you have it split out like that then you could even try to automate the whole process of deleting old torrents with tools like https://github.com/Hundter/qBittorrent-Ratio-Manager or https://github.com/Mythic82/Qbittorrent-auto-delete

On Linux it would be something like

cp -al /home/barnaclebill/mytorrents/trackera/thismovie.2025 /home/barnaclebill/mytorrents/trackerb/

Would hardlink the same torrent data in two places so that torrents for trackera can point to the trackera folder and torrents for trackerb can point to the trackerb folder.

One thing you may want to update - listing Tor’s logging policy as “No Logs” is a bit misleading, that’s really more of a voluntary recommendation for individual Tor exit relay operators.

Tor exit relay operators absolutely can store logs of outgoing connections if they choose to. And technically they could even snoop on non-secure traffic if they choose, there’s a reason you should be using HTTPS if you’re going to use Tor for clearnet browsing.

Of course most Tor exit relay operators aren’t going to do these things but it’s all voluntary, seems incorrect to claim all exit relay operators follow no log principles.

EDIT: Also AFAIK you can’t forward a port from the clearnet through a Tor exit relay’s public IP address back to your own Tor client, Tor doesn’t do port forwarding like that. It’s definitely not needed to run Tor Browser (and Tor VPN I think) but that isn’t needed for any of the other VPNs either, a bit confusing how you listed that one.

Agreed, if OP is going to add Tor in a “VPN” list then may as well add I2P. I2P + outproxies are pretty much the same thing as Tor + Tor Exit Relay. It’s not the best way to utilize I2P but the option does exist.

Then again neither Tor nor I2P should be in a “VPN” list, the whole thing seems more of a VPN provider topic.

This doesn’t answer your main question but I suspect their thinking is that VPN use is already very common in torrent communities. So common that it’s not really a big deal for users to browse the site via VPN if necessary. It’s not really that the staff there is going to do age verification, realistically if necessary they’d likely just block access from whatever states/jurisdictions are giving them issues with age verification.

That aside not too sure if what you’re looking for currently exists. There are a few general torrent sites that also operate Tor / I2P domains, and also the general torrent indexer Postman exists on I2P. The amount of users in Tor / I2P networks is way lower vs the clearnet torrent sites so a hyper-focused torrent site in Tor / I2P doesn’t seem viable but I could be wrong.