VastOne has worked very hard to create this beautiful fluxbox based environment. But when you open SMPlayer it doesn't blend with the look of Vsido. It looks kind of ugly. Why it does look different? Because it is built using Qt toolkit instead of Gtk toolkit. Other applications built using Qt will also look out of place in Vsido.
Solution? Very easy. Open your favourite text editor and add following,

[Qt]

style=GTK

Save this file as 'Trolltech.conf' in the '~/.config' directory. Chances are that the file already exists. If so just overwrite it when prompted. Logout and log back in. Now open SMPlayer and it will look exactly like the rest of the applications.
VastOne can add this 'Trolltech.conf' in '/etc/skel/.config' of the next Vsido iso and users won't have to do this manually.
Cheers!!!

He announced this news six days back. I guess this was inevitable after Debian's move to systemd. Here is the link to his post,
http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/ignorantgurus-hiatus/

As reported here,
http://vsido.org/index.php?topic=752.msg8424#msg8424

and here,
http://vsido.org/index.php?topic=752.msg8447#msg8447

It seems AdBlock is going astray. Here is a simpler and system wide alternative to AdBlock. Just save this bash script somewhere in your path, Give it 'Execute' permission, Run it and follow simple instruction given by the script. That's it. You will have a system wide, Cross browser adblocker deployed. And yes don't forget to run the script once a week to keep the database updated.


#!/bin/bash

# If this is our first run, save a copy of the system's original hosts file and set to read-only for safety
if [ ! -f ~/.hosts-system ]
then
echo "Saving copy of system's original hosts file..."
cp /etc/hosts ~/.hosts-system
chmod 444 ~/.hosts-system
fi

# Perform work in temporary files
temphosts1=$(mktemp)
temphosts2=$(mktemp)

# Obtain various hosts files and merge into one
echo "Downloading ad-blocking hosts files..."
wget -nv -O - http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt >> "$temphosts1"
wget -nv -O - http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp >> "$temphosts1"
wget -nv -O - http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts >> "$temphosts1"
wget -nv -O - "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=0&mimetype=plaintext" >> "$temphosts1"

# Do some work on the file:
# 1. Remove MS-DOS carriage returns
# 2. Delete all lines that don't begin with 127.0.0.1
# 3. Delete any lines containing the word localhost because we'll obtain that from the original hosts file
# 4. Replace 127.0.0.1 with 0.0.0.0 because then we don't have to wait for the resolver to fail
# 5. Scrunch extraneous spaces separating address from name into a single tab
# 6. Delete any comments on lines
# 7. Clean up leftover trailing blanks
# Pass all this through sort with the unique flag to remove duplicates and save the result
echo "Parsing, cleaning, de-duplicating, sorting..."
sed -e 's/\r//' -e '/^127.0.0.1/!d' -e '/localhost/d' -e 's/127.0.0.1/0.0.0.0/' -e 's/ \+/\t/' -e 's/#.*$//' -e 's/[ \t]*$//' < "$temphosts1" | sort -u > "$temphosts2"

# Combine system hosts with adblocks
echo Merging with original system hosts...
echo -e "\n# Ad blocking hosts generated" "$date" | cat ~/.hosts-system - "$temphosts2" > ~/.hosts-block

# Clean up temp files and remind user to copy new file
echo "Cleaning up..."
rm "$temphosts1" "$temphosts2"
echo "Done."
echo
echo "Copy ad-blocking hosts file with this command:"
echo "sudo cp ~/.hosts-block /etc/hosts"
echo
echo "You can always restore your original hosts file with this command:"
echo "sudo cp ~/.hosts-system /etc/hosts"
echo "so don't delete that file! (It's saved read-only for your protection.)"


Cheers!!!

I've this script that fetches lyrics of currently playing song in MOC and displays it in terminal,


#!/bin/sh
TITLE="`mocp -i | grep 'Title:' | sed -e 's/^.*: //'`";
if [ "$TITLE" != "" ]; then
ARTIST="`mocp -i | grep 'Artist:' | sed -e 's/^.*: //'`";
SONGTITLE="`mocp -i | grep 'SongTitle:' | sed -e 's/^.*: //'`";
ALBUM="`mocp -i | grep 'Album:' | sed -e 's/^.*: //'`";
if [ "$ARTIST" != "" ]; then ARTIST="$ARTIST"; fi
if [ "$ALBUM" != "" ]; then ALBUM="($ALBUM)"; fi
#echo $ARTIST $SONGTITLE $ALBUM
#else echo ,,MOC"
#fi
artist=`echo "$ARTIST" | perl -MURI::Escape -ne 'chomp;print uri_escape($_),"\n"'`
title=`echo "$SONGTITLE" | perl -MURI::Escape -ne 'chomp;print uri_escape($_),"\n"'`
song=`curl -s "http://makeitpersonal.co/lyrics?artist=$artist&title=$title"`
echo "$SONGTITLE - $ARTIST - $ALBUM\n$song" | less
else echo ,,MOC"
fi


It works fine most of the time but fails in some instances when a song tag or artist tag contains some extra characters.
Any ideas to parse tags more efficiently and make them more url friendly?
Cheers.

I was a bit reluctant to post this as it is not exactly a VSIDO specific problem. But someone whispered in my ear to go ahead and post it so...
My main machine has modest specs. AMD Sempron 2800+ processor running at 1600 MHZ, 2 Gigs of RAM, Motherboard with VIA k8M800 chipset. Now VIA never released proper Linux graphics drivers for this chipset and the only functional drivers are provided by OpenChrome project. This is not a great system but it fulfills my modest needs.
Here is the problem part. I've a few 720p videos and when I play them the playback is choppy and slow. All necessary codecs like libav family, gstreamer family, w32codecs are installed. openchrome driver is installed. Now this choppy playback occurs on every Debian distro I have on this machine. VSIDO, Semplice, and a custom Sid install.
Here is the interesting part, I also have Bodhi Linux [based on Ubuntu Precise 12.04] and Salix 14.0 [based on slackware 14.0] installed on this machine and the 720p videos play fine there. There is no stutter in video playback.
I've tried different kernels ranging from 3.2 to liquorix 3.12.7. I've tried mplayer2 and the newer mpv. mplayer2 and mpv configs are identical across Bodhi-Salix and all Debian flavors.
So why the playback is choppy on Debian based distros and okay in Salix-Bodhi?
Here's my mplayer2 config,


ao=alsa
vo=xv
cache=8192
cache-min=20
cache-seek-min=50
double=yes
ontop=yes
stop-xscreensaver=yes
idx=yes
ass=yes
embeddedfonts=yes
sub-fuzziness=1
slang=en


And mpv config,

ao=alsa
vo=xv
cache-default=8192
cache=8192
cache-min=20
cache-seek-min=50
fs=no
osc=no
ontop=yes
softvol=no
slang=en
stop-screensaver=yes
user-agent="Mozilla/5.0"


Here is detailed info of a video file that stutters under Debian,

Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID                                 : mp42
File size                                : 87.5 MiB
Duration                                 : 5mn 28s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 2 232 Kbps
Encoded date                             : UTC 2011-05-05 19:43:07
Tagged date                              : UTC 2011-05-05 19:43:07
gsst                                     : 0
gstd                                     : 328771
gssd                                     : BADC23143HH1340962604252990
gshh                                     : o-o.preferred.sin01s10.v3.lscache7.c.youtube.com

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 1 frame
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 5mn 28s
Bit rate                                 : 2 076 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 5 886 Kbps
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 23.976 fps
Minimum frame rate                       : 17.241 fps
Maximum frame rate                       : 24.390 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.094
Stream size                              : 81.4 MiB (93%)
Tagged date                              : UTC 2011-05-05 19:43:09

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                           : LC
Codec ID                                 : 40
Duration                                 : 5mn 28s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 151 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 204 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L R
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 5.92 MiB (7%)
Title                                    : (C) 2007 Google Inc. v08.13.2007.
Encoded date                             : UTC 2011-05-05 19:43:08
Tagged date                              : UTC 2011-05-05 19:43:09


Any feedback is welcome.
Cheers.

A power failure and an eternity [my internet speed after a certain usage drops down to blazing-amazing 30KBPS] later I finally gave a spin to 32 bit flavor of VSIDO 2014_01_13.iso. And my impression?
Kudos to VastOne 
A job well done 
A near perfect experience 
9 out of 10 
Why only 9 I hear you say 
Well only little gripe I had was tint2 housing wicd in the top right corner was clashing with window controls. Close button of any maximize window was inaccessible as clicking there would open wicd menu. This was in live session. Sadly I don't presently have a spare partition so I wasn't able to install this VSIDO image.
VSIDO is for sure going in the right direction.
Cheers.

Well first-up congrats on a very good sid based distro. I know it's a labor of love fulfilled for VastOne and company.
A confession, I'm neither a VSIDO nor a CrunchBang user but I learned a lot from reading those great discussions in CrunchBang forums.
Yesterday I gave a spin  to the 32 bit version of VSIDO. And I couldn't help notice one thing. While it's good but I think there are areas that can be improved. For example some application icons were missing in the live XFCE session, A couple of applications didn't run in Openbox session, I was unable to restart the machine from display manager login screen etc. etc..
These are by no means critical bugs but I felt that it would be better if VSIDO devs concentrate on providing only one DE-WM instead of four. This way they will have to worry about a few things less, They will be able to concentrate and work on one and only one thing and the result will be a much more polished VSIDO. Ad the resulting ISO image will also be lighter.
Wishing you guys all the luck for the future. Keep the VISIDO rolling.
Cheers.