Run on Manjaro?

[Jeff-411]

This is a beautiful app!

I can't find a way to install build-essential on Manjaro. Would I be better off just switching to an Ubuntu based distro to run Sigma in production mode?

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[aleksey-hoffman]

Hey, mate, thanks for the feedback!

I'm not that familiar with Arch Linux, but Googled and found this (be cautious though, I'm not sure what it does exactly):

It says you can run this command:

sudo pacman -Sy base-devel

Choose the default option, and you are good to go

[Jeff-411]

Thanks Aleksey,

Yes, I Googled my way to that same page and ran the code - but Sigma still won't build. (Sorry to have put you to the trouble. I should have mentioned my Google efforts in a, "What I've tried so far" blurb in my 1st post. :P)

Anyway, no problem. I'll just switch over to Neon or something. If it's a choice between Manjaro and Sigma, Sigma wins hands-down.

Sigma's functionality is radically superior to anyof the file managers I've come across in the last 6 weeks of distro/DE-hopping. Also, for me personally, Sigma's beyond "beautiful." For me, it's closer maybe to something like an "answer to prayer." :) (see below.)

---

As per your CONTRIBUTING.md,

"Create a new issue or a discussion and describe the feature / fix / changes you want to implement so we can discuss it first."

My wife was legally blind at 20, and her vision has continued to deteriorate in the 50 years since. Her situation became critical a few years ago, when her vision reached a point where her Hotmail/Outlook.live was becoming pretty much useless to her. (By the time she "zoomed-in" enough to see anything, there was almost noroom left to read or write anything!)

Fortunately, at that point I stumbled across a Chrome extension called Witchcraft, a css/js code injector. My coding skills were even more limited then than they are now. I mean, I'd never heard of scss or nodejs, always avoided GitHub results in my Google searches because I knew I wouldn't understand, etc.

But (Fools rush in...!) I jumped in anyway. And have now pretty much totally revamped her Outlook.live interface. (When I finish rewriting the rat's nest of code that emerged as my skills evolved, I'm hoping to open-source it... for anybody who's willing to put up with Outlook.live's apparently endless breaking updates.)

Anyway, answer-to-prayer-wise, the whole reason I've been distro/DE-hopping for the last while is that her vision has hit a place where the same limitations to the "global zoom in" strategy we ran into with her Outlook.live GUI experience are now impacting the entire Windows environment.

Most especially, I was finding that in order for her to have even a chance of using the Windows file manager, I'd need to use ridiculously (and counter-productively) high "Resolution" and "Resize all text" settings.

In consequence of this, I explored (I think pretty well all) the "Windows File Manager" alternatives. None of them proved useful vision-wise.

Then, I somehow stumbled across the whole Electron thing.

I crash-coursed on Electron for a bit, then started working on a very basic visually-accessible Electron app. By "very basic," I mean an app without context menus, the capacity to copy or move folders/files, or anything like that. All I was hoping to do (and, more or less, did do) was create an Electron app that would at least let her see and run the files in some of her favourite folders.

I was still trying to level up this app, when - one day about 6 weeks ago - it struck me that maybe some Linux distro/DE might already have done the job! Which led to the last 6 weeks of distro-hopping, to Manjaro and KDE, and (yesterday somehow) to Sigma.

---

I know I've gone on at great length here. But I didwant to give a bit of context for where I'm coming from. When I cloned Sigma, ran "npm run dev" and saw the dev console pop up before your file manager even loaded, I kind of screamed inside... "This I can work with!"

---

As you might guess, I resonate deeply when you say:

This app is an example of what dedication [& caring & sheer, bloody-minded, stubbornness] can do for you - when I started this project I could barely code, and in just 2 years of work [for me longer] with budget of $0, the dedication allowed me [& may yet allow me] to create an app, which in version 1.0 in some aspects can already compete with [and surpass! ] apps like Windows "File Explorer" [and a raft of Linux file managers] which has[/have] been in development for...

I also connected deeply with your goal, "Create the best existing..."

In fact, the experience of reading your goal - and then, most importantly, looking at the quality of the Sigma app itself - has helped me realise that this actually is my own, often hidden (even from myself!) goal. I mean, your goal statement has helped me recognize that (truth be known) I really do at least want to develop the mostvisually accessible and Joe-user tweakable UX in the world!

No idea if I can actually do it, of course. But somehow, one of my main takeaways from these last 24 hours of the "Sigma experience" is that this "most visually accessible and Joe-user tweakable UX in the world" is, in point of actual fact, my personal goal.

Nothing like a better "bucket list," eh? So thank you. :)

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All that said...

1. I've zero experience with coordinating the workflow/commit process across potentially parallel repos/branches. Especially given my advancing years though, I'm quite sure that I'd prefer that anything I (and others?) might contribute toward "the best visually-impaired-user-tweakable File Manager in the world" be integrated as an option within or variant of the (cross-platform) Sigma app.

2. I have zero experience with VUE. If the globalVuetifyOverrides.css file does what its name seems to suggest, this may not be much of an issue. This maybe-non-issueness is due to the fact that I don't expect that my immediate personal goal of making Sigma more visually-accessible to my wife will require anything more than CSS styling mods. If my understanding of the ...Overrides.css is not correct, please let me know. In which case, we'll hopefully be able to come up with some way (VUE crash-courses and/or some private tutoring from you) to address my VUE ignorance).

3. If you're up for any of this, I'd be quite happy to continue our conversation in this current context. But I also have zero clue about just what's appropriate to a "GitHub issue" context. So, if you'd prefer some other format (email/Zoom/grateful supporter chat/???) just let me know.

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On top of which, HUGE thanks for your veryquick response!

~ Jeff

p.s. I'm 6 (unhelpful) replies & 33 views into a font-size/scaling question I asked on the KDE - Dolphin forum. I'd like to reply to my own question with a link to Sigma, and mark my reply as the "Accepted answer." Would that be OK with you?

p.p.s. Before sending this off, I ran this post by my wife (partly to id any real dumbos, and partly because I absolutely never what to be categorized as one of those "professionals" (of one sort or another) who claims to "speak for" a disabled person who's perfectly capable of speaking for themselves). As hoped, she corrected a couple of dumbos, then said it's, "Good to go." :)

Meanwhile, would it be possible to get a copy of the Eslint preferences you're using on the site? I'm getting a ton of warnings when I run Sigma in dev mode.

I've got to say I'm really excited to have come across Sigma. I've spent a lot of time looking for a file manager I can adapt to meet the needs of my visually-impaired wife. I'll need to learn VUE before I can really dive into it, but Sigma gives us a clear path forward. And that feels just great!

[aleksey-hoffman]

Thanks Jeff

As for using Sigma on Linux, please keep in mind that Sigma on Linux still has a lot of problems. For some reason it cannot access packaged binaries like 7zip (for the archiver feature), yt-dlp (for the video downloading feature), and ffmpeg (for thumbnail generation and media file info).

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I had a chance to read your previous comment before you removed it, Sorry, I was quite busy today, didn't have a chance to reply yet. I suppose you thought it’s not a place for a story, but it’s totally fine, mate, if you wish to express and share something, don't be shy, don't think you should remove it because someone here might not like it, just go for it, no regrets. I liked it, and I appreciate what you’re trying to do for your wife and what you’re about in general, from what I read.

I took it upon myself to restore the message for you. If you still wish to remove it, you can just restore the previous comment version.

I feel for the situation with your wife man. Fuck diseases! I’m not sure if you have already read my plans but I’m working on a project that, in collaboration with a few universities, will soon help scientists to cure all existing diseases and medical conditions, including cell aging, by speeding up medication development from tens of years to just months. If you like what I do, I think you might like that project even more than Sigma, once it comes out.

I'd gladly work with you on adding more accessibility features into Sigma!

You mentioned you'd consider private tutoring with me, well I’m actually teaching development and currently looking for more students, I'm trying to get enough funding for my bigger medical project. The lessons are $25 / hour. It takes me about 100 hours to turn a beginner into a good junior web / desktop app developer, so if you wish to learn from me, and have the passion, I’d gladly teach you!

[Jeff-411]

Thanks for the encouragement Aleksey. My last post seemed fine when I went to bed last night. But when I read it this morning it seemed crazy-long, and maybe a bit over-storied. Glad to get a better idea of the "house rules" here. :) I like them! And I much appreciate your kind words.

Thanks for the heads-up about Sigma on Linux. I managed to bork my Windows machine about a month ago, but I'll shift over to it as soon as I get it fixed or replaced.

I started exploring css overrides today. So far, so good, at least with low-hanging fruit like font-sizes. I'm thinking to keep exploring for a few days, but I can already see there will be some modifications I'll need some help on.

If you're up for it, I'd be very happy to pay for some scheduled "How to" support around specific issues, and (after I've rummaged around enough to start to get the feel of it) some more general tutoring around how you've got the whole app structured.

Regarding the latter, my urgent priority is to build something that will work for my wife asap. But, also, I believe the more I can move beyond just doing stuff - and begin to understand the deeper structure of the code - the better it will be.

Would something like that work for you?

[aleksey-hoffman]

What happened to your Windows machine? I might be able to help you fix it

I'm up for starting lessons anytime. And yeah, let's start with CSS and the basics, and then decide where we go from there. Please add me to friends on Discord: aleksey-hoffman#7189 It's a good place to chat / study

[Jeff-411]

Great. I've sent a friend-request to you on Discord. Hope it works.

Machine-wise: I was trying to set up a dual boot with Linux on my Windows machine - and did something wrong. It may have been recoverable at that stage, but I ran a "Fix boot" utility that Linux suggested, and that completely killed it.

At the moment, it "Resets" itself within 1 - 2 seconds of powering on.

I Googled some key-combinations that are supposed to reset the BIOS, but they did not work. I also tried to reset the BIOS by opening it up and pulling the CMOS battery, but could find no sign of one in its innards.

Tutoring-wise: Yes, I'll spend a few more days adding different css overrides. This should result in a mock-up of where I'm heading with this accessibility project. Hopefully, it will also suggest just where it might make sense to focus the turoring.

One quick question. Is there an option for displaying Windows-style tree-view Folders sidebar in the main main Navigator page?

Meanwhile, the more I look around Sigma, the better I like it. It's starting to feel more like a full-bore Linux-type DE than a standard Windows file manager. Also, after endless trench-warfare with Outlook.live's obfuscated 16 - 20 character alpha-numeric class names, it's sure nice to work with more understandable blocks of css!

p.s. Tomorrow I need to head out of town for a day or two for some vehicle repairs. My online access may be a bit sketchy from early tomorrow onward.

[aleksey-hoffman]

Don't worry, to reinstall Windows on your machine, all you'll need is a USB stick (8GB+), that's an easy one

Is there an option for displaying Windows-style tree-view Folders sidebar in the main main Navigator page?

Not yet, but I could add such layout option in the future

I've sent a friend-request to you on Discord

Great! Let move the discussion over there