Deltacopy is a GUI wrapper around rsync, a feature-packed tool to copy files locally AND remotely, AND differentially (automatically figure out the parts that are different and resend. Excellent for repair) through hash comparisons. For non-programmers, hash is a unique ID computed for a chunk of data that are expected to change wildly even at the slightest data/file change/corruption).

Deltacopy is very useful if you just want to do the basic stuff and not know the rsync syntax and switch combinations off the top of your head. It also provides a windows port of rsync based on Cygwin (a tiny Linux runtime environment for windows). This is the only free alternative to cwRsync, a paid Windows port of rsync.

rsync is a Swiss Army Knife that can also work from one local path to another. Deltacopy is intended for remote file transfer.

Deltacopy server is basically this:

rsync --daemon 

However in Windows, since it’s cygwin, it’s looking for linux’s /etc/rsyncd.conf by default if you do not specify the config file through --config switch.

Deltacopy client basically help you generate the command to transfer files. Most of the features are done through right-click (context) menu, not toolbar or pull-down menus, which might confuse some people. You set up your tasks as Profile, which can be scheduled (the bottom panel) or executed immediately by right clicking on the profile:

Run is pushing file to the server, Restore is pulling files from the server. Run Now and Restore are for executing the command (aka task) immediately. You can peek into what it generated by right-clicking on the profile and choose “Display Run/Restore Command”. First time users might not be able to find it since the only place to access it is through context menus.

There are some tricky parts (gotchas) for specifying the files/folders to copy. First of all, even though you use Add Folder/Add Files button for entries

Basically you can make a (source, destination) pair by modifying the selection and target path. It’s just passed onto rsync command verbatim. The target path is relative to the virtual directory set on he server (see Deltacopy Server’s directory)

The destination path which is endowed with the branch folder name (one-level). In other words, if your source is C:/foo/bar, Deltacopy by default set the destination to /bar instead of /. This is probably to avoid the temptation of lumping all contents in the same remote destination root. If you just want to simply lay the files at the root virtual folder at the destination (my most common use case), you’ll have to edit and clear out the (relative) destination path.

As for the source, the author of rsync chose to do it the logical (more conservative) way but not intuitive way: by default it reconstruct the source folder’s FULL path structure at the destination! For example if you intend to copy everything under C:\foo over, the destination will create {destination root}\foo in the process and put everything under it instead of directly at {destination root}. The design choice was supposed to prevent accidental overwrites as multiple source subfolders try to write over each other with the same names at the destination.

Luckily, there’s a way around it! See man pages for -R –relative: Put a dot (.) at the place where the relative path starts! For example, the source is C:\foo\bar\baz and you do not want /foo to be created at the destination and want it to start with /bar instead. You should enter C:\foo\.\bar\baz as source. Everything the left of the dot (refers to self-folder) are stripped from the destination path structure.

ACL support for Windows sucks because rsync lives on cygwin, which has POSIX (unix/linux) type of permissions/ACL.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/547275/how-do-i-use-rsync-to-reliably-transfer-permissions-acls-when-copying-from-ntf

In my opinion, the best way to go about it is to not transfer ACLs from the source and follow the preexisting ACLs at the destination. I’d also leave the groups and owners alone (inherit at destination) as well I might not be on the same active directory (or workgroup user management) as the destination computer so accounts with the same name might not be actually the same accounts.

--no-p --no-g --no-o

–no-{command} is the complement prefix that does the opposite of the -{command}, so the above means skipping -p (perms/permissions), -g (group), -o (owner) and make sure it has full permissions for everybody.

Sometimes a remote path can be mistaken as a relative local path with the hostname/IP address as the folder name if there’s no username. Start it with rsync:// as the URL scheme and the syntax is like ftp:// as far as username is concerned.

Deltacopy protects the source and destination paths with double quotes (“). It’s a good practice that we should do it even with direct rsync calls.

Given that I grew up as a power DOS/Windows user, I often have gripes about how frustrating Linux is and they were almost never ready for people who just want to get common things done by intuitively guessing where the feature is (therefore having to RTFM or search the web for answers).

I deal with HP/Agilent/Keysight instruments a lot and appreciated their effort put on user experience (UX) design. It’s not that user who’s stupid if they have to dig through 5+ levels of menu buttons to measure a Vpp (peak to peak voltage) and the software aren’t smart enough to default to the only channel in use. That’s what Tektronix did to their nasty user interface and raised a generation of Stockholm Syndrome patients who keep buying Tek because they are traumatized by the steep learning curve and would rather walk on broken glass than having to learn a new interface from another vendor (that’s called vendor lock in).

I certainly appreciate Cinnamon desktop environment (came with Linux mint) designers willing to not insist on the ‘right way of doing things’ and follow a path that’s most intuitive for users coming from a Windows background.

The last time I used Linux Mint was 19. There’s still quite a lot of rough edges. Some services got stuck (time-outs) right out of the box and systemd went through slowly. It’s just not fast and responsive. When I tried it again when Mint 20.1 was released, my old i3 computer boots to the GUI in 5 seconds and I was hell of impressed. The icons and menus are also now sized balanced proportions like Windows (can’t stand the big and thick default menu-item fonts like Ubuntu).

However, there’s one big impeding factor for me to make Linux Mint my primary computer: the packages repositories are one generation behind Ubuntu (the most widely supported distro)! Software often have bugs that the developers solved, living with old, ‘proven’ software slows down the iterative process.

I’ve been through hell trying to access Bitlocker volume with Linux Mint 20.1 as not only it doesn’t work right of the box like Windows, I’m stuck with a command line dislocker that doesn’t integrated with the file manager (like Nemo). The zuluCrypt available with Mint 20.1 is too old to support Bitlocker properly. Trying to upgrade it to 6.0 has Qt dependencies which is unsolvable. I was able to download the unsanctioned old revision in debian package but there’s more unsolvable dependencies.

The alternative option of compiling from the source is met with more dependencies fuckery and now the restrictive Mint repository might not have the exact version of the compiler required by the source code package. Aargh!

I was about to give up Linux Mint and install Ubuntu and try to hold my nose changing the desktop to Cinnamon. Luckily I’ve found somebody who read my mind: there’s Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix!

Not only Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix supported Bitlocker right out of the box (no need to fuck with zuluCrypt which doesn’t integrate with the file explorer anyway)! Most of the defaults make sense, buttons are often where I expect them to be. Even Win+P key works identically! The names/lingo are close to Windows whenever possible, and honestly the default Yari theme is visually slightly more pleasing than Windows as it makes very good use of the visual spaces!

Here’s a few transition tips

I use Winsplit-Revolution in Windows (old version is freeware) that uses the numeric keypad to lock the window to the 9 squares grid using Ctrl+Alt+{Numpad 1-9}. Save the keyboard shortcuts in case if you want to install it again on another computer:

dconf dump /org/cinnamon/desktop/keybindings/ > dconf-settings.conf
dconf load /org/cinnamon/desktop/keybindings/ < dconf-settings.conf

There’s no Ctrl+Shift-Esc key which I often use to call Task Manager (called System monitor). I had to make the shortcut as well to feel at home.