Hi, guys. Besides the VastOne's advices on keeping full system backpups with fsarchiver for recovery purposes, I use rsync daily but not fsarchiver...

Well, a couple of days ago I had to move my computer to other room. Disassembled everything and gently carry all the stuff. Put everything together, booted and... blinking cursor. What the.... 

Tried everything, swapping drives, cables, SATA ports... the disk was apparently dead. Decided to try to recover it just in case it wans't actually dead. Booted my Vsido live ISO (it has fsarchiver on-board!) and was able to mount and read the disk contents, so crossed my fingers and run fsarchiver, erased and reformated the disk, and restored the partitions. Still no joy but again everything was readable, the partitions mounted and worked correctly, so the apparent culprits would be grub and the efi things. time to chroot.

I didn't either remembered the cool vchroot script by harckerdefo (also a vsido default tool) . A great rediscovering! Long story short, I managed to put everything onto a bigger brand new SSD I had around and restoring the grub/efi stuff, plus installing via chroot a fresh Void Linux system on the older SSD. Both systems are now up and running perfectly well. All done from Vsido!

Yes guys, Vsido is a darn great recovery live system with all the needed tools already included. Thanks a billion for your brilliant work, VastOne.

P.S. Don't be lazy and run fsarchiver from a Vsido live ISO regularly whatever the systems you use on your machines. I'll do it from now on. Promise!

I was unaware about the current version I'm using, but I noticed today it's SpaceFM 1.0.6. Hey, wasn't it frozen/abandoned on 1.0.5???

So went to github and guess what... IgnorantGuru is still quietly taking some care of his creature. Released two months ago. but yeah. It's there. 

https://github.com/IgnorantGuru/spacefm/releases

This a kind of noob question... I've been using Nvivia cards since... forver. But I'm a total noob about AMD. It's the first time I put my hands on one of these.

The situation is I'm tired of struggling with the Nvidia propietary drivers since I've got the GTX960. Switched to nouveau a couple of months ago and performance is not so great. So I've got an RX560 trying to say goodbye to the Nvidia hardware for once and forget about the drivers mess just using what's in the kernel.

The thing is I don't know how the heck to switch the drivers in sid. The card works right out of the box in my Void install, but for some reason I don't manage to get it working for the sidbox. If I blacklist nouveau, poweroff, switch the GPUs and boot, grub doesn't even show up and the boot process stalls with udev saying something like that "the slot" is already in use and it freezes there forever.

Apparently I already have all the needed packages (firmware, xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu, the mesa stuff, etc...) onboard.

Please, someone able to shed some light?

Thanks a bunch in advance.

Anyone else having issues with SpaceFM? It's not something happening every day but it happens quite often. I don't know if it's a memory leak, a segfault, or whatever, but once SpaceFM freezes when opening htop to kill it I can see at least two CPU cores maxed out.  I suspect it's some conflict with dbus, but it's just a wild guess. I would like to know if it's only here or someone else is having this issue.

The installed version is 1.0.5 (GTK2). Which is the last one. But.... it's two years and a half old!

Is SpaceFM abandonware by now? It will be so sad seeing my favorite file manager ever going down and having to switch to anything else. The Ignoranrguru's blog is also silent since a long time ago. This doesn't smell so good either.

Edit: It's one year and a half old. My bad.

@VastOne: maybe you'll like this

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?pid=10928#p10928

Coming from here.

I can group libreoffice windows now. But I don't want writer and calc windows grouped together. I want the spreadsheets to be left alone for my particular needs. Need to see and compare work schedules and road routes displayed at once side by side, so grouping spreadsheets is a drawback for me. But this code groups everything libreoffice together.

[group]  (workspace=[current])
[app] (name=libreoffice) (class=libreoffice-writer)
[app] (name=libreoffice) (class=LibreOffice 5.0)
  [Position] (UPPERLEFT) {4% 3%}
  [Shaded] {no}
  [Deco] {NORMAL}
  [Sticky] {no}
  [Minimized] {no}
  [Maximized] {no}
  [Fullscreen] {no}
  [Layer] {8}
  [Alpha] {255}
[end]

Any ideas on how to proceed? This nasty line seems to gather everything together: [app] (name=libreoffice) (class=LibreOffice 5.0) but if I remove it the libreoffice grouping stops working at all.

I want to group any/all the libreoffice writer windows in the current desktop but they are not responding. I can group them manually, of course, but they doesn't group automatically via the apps file.

If I'm not wrong, this seems to be the obvious config (it's what xprop outputs) but it does nothing.

[group] (workspace=[current])
  [app] (name=libreoffice) (class=libreoffice-writer)
[end]

Or this:

[group]
  [app] (name=libreoffice) (class=libreoffice-writer)
  [Workspace] {CURRENT}
[end]

Tried some other variations including this ignoring workspaces:

[group]
  [app] (title=.*odt - LibreOffice Writer)
[end]

Still not working. Is Libreoffice different than the usual windows or am I missing something?

This is doing nothing. Still need to click to focus tabs instead of simply hovering the tittlebar.

session.screen0.tabFocusModel: MouseToTabFocus

Does it needs any other thing in init to be enabled?

Please, share your favorite monospace fonts for minimal eye straining. I'm very picky with the fonts. I've found my holy grial ttf for most uses; OpenSans. but for the monos I'm still not comfortable enough. I tipically use DejaVu Sans Mono. It's quite good, but still far away from the OpenSans easy reading. Post your favs and suggestions. I'm all eyes. 

PS, I forgot it. The best ones around size 9. Size uses to make a big difference. For Dejavu I find size 9 too rough and size 8 smooth enough, but starts to be too small.

I got a nice Logitech M600 mouse. Kinda pad meets a mouse. Great for aleviating hand straining. Lovely in that respect but it has no mid button. I want to use a keystroke to replace that missing button. All the guides I've found start by finding the code for that mid click with xev or whatever... but i don't have that button to beggin with. Any ideas?

After last update, a quite big one since I wasn't dist-upgrading regularly due to my recent HD problems, vsido-exit is not fully working. Only logout works. Not reboot or power off. I suspect of lightdm. Got an update and I found surprising that it doesn't autologin or selects my username as it should. The user field is blank. Then found this about the exit. Anyone else or it's only here?

As you may know, I recently switched my main system from a KDE based one to a Boxes thing. There's one thing I'm missing. In KDE I had the habit of dragging URLs from the browser to Dolphin and it creates a desktop file for the link like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Icon=unknown
Name=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMiyeNxcBSY
Type=Link
URL[$e]=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMiyeNxcBSY

They don't work outside KDE, but I found this way to tweak them to work anywhere.

[Desktop Entry]
Icon=emblem-symbolic-link
Name=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMiyeNxcBSY
Type=Link
#For Dolphin
#URL[$e]=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMiyeNxcBSY
Exec=iceweasel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMiyeNxcBSY

Damnit, the [youtube] things shouldn't be there, but cannot get rid of them. Sorry.

I left the KDE leftover code commented just in case. I'll have to modify tons of them, but I will go over them as I need them. Not in a hurry.

The thing is. I'd like to keep throwing URLs into my file manager (spacefm). I need a script pasting or parsing a highlighted or clipboard URL into that kind of desktop file pattern. just filling the gaps. Or maybe (even better?) a spacefm plugin. The problem is I don't know where to start. What would be the bash commands to use in this situation? I mean, to fill the "gaps" in a file pattern/stencil like this?

[Desktop Entry]
Icon=emblem-symbolic-link
Name="Highlighted-or-clipboard-URL" -- or even better the script asking for a name here and to save the file under the-same-name.desktop.
Type=Link
#For Dolphin
#URL[$e]="Highlighted-or-clipboard-URL" -- these KDE lines might be skipped.
Exec=iceweasel "Highlighted-or-clipboard-URL"

Any kind of guidance and/or strategy will be welcome for a lifetime.

Thanks in advance.

After four long days of hard struggling trying to make my main hard disk to be able to boot a system again and researching a bit, I discovered that this HD had all the symptoms of a rootkit.

Apparently they like to live at the kernel level, they use to be injected while installing drivers, and they use to fuck up your MBR... exactly what I was doing and what happened. Plus, formating doesn't help. Exactly what happened to me. Installed like eight different systems with different grub options. Nothing worked even after a low level formating. Scanning and trying to discard damaged or faulty HD sectors reported nothing wrong in the entire disk. Everytime GRUB failed to boot. The systems were bootable from the GRUB in my second drive. The only solution I've found is going for GPT partition table. This has a smaller 64 MB efi_grub partition instead of the 446 or thereabouts for GRUB, or 512 MB in total including 64 MB for the partitions in a DOS partition table. This excluded the screwed up part from the equation altogether and finally the HD is bootable again. I was about to trash it and buying a new one... phew!

I cannot tell for sure if it's a rootkit there, but given my recent damned experience, be careful if you use smxi to instal Nvidia drivers. And better have rkhunter and/or chkrootkit on hand. I had no idea of this in advance and it gave no time to react. Chose to install the drivers and then all went south. No way to fix my system or booting it again. All destroyed and gone in seconds. Perhaps downloading only and running rkhunter before doing anything might be a wise option.

Well, I think I've had my first rootkit experience. I'm not a virgin anymore... but I don't recommend the experience to anyone. BTW, Fucking bastards! Why they do this?

I know smxi works wonders for most people, nevertheless, It never worked for me before in different computers. I always had to install my drivers in a dirty way. I thought it was due to my 10 years old GPU. But finally I've got a brand new replacement. A GFX 960. I thought this time it will make it... but it didn't. And not only failed. It also fully borked my main system. Crapped out udev beyond being fixable. I couldn't repair it but at the same time fully corrupted the MBR. I managed to install three different isos twice each, but the MBR was fucked up and none booted. Their GRUBs went wrong all the six times. They all run fine if launched from the "rescue" GRUB I have in my second HD just in case. The installs went right excepting the GRUB into the MBR. I formatted the HD but it didn't succeed. The partitions went "right" and they work as expected, but not the MBR. gpart didn't managed to repair it. The scan says the drive has six Windows partitions!!! I'll have to zero it. Will try to write zeroes with dd first. If this doesn't work either, I'll have to do a full low level formatting. Will never run smxi again for the rest of my life.

And at the same time, so long SolydK. You've being killed, buddy. It has been a nice year together. Switching to antix whenever I mange to fix the MBR. Will go with the antix core iso and will try to build and mimic Vsido as much as i can, but on stable this time.

AFAIK, In the Debian world only antiX keeps going with sysvinit leaving systemd off the equation. But if I got it right (I might be wrong, as usual), only for Stable. It seems they want to make this possible for the rolling flavors too. But for now if you want to be sure to keep going with sysvinit you must stick to Jessie.

In a different territory, the guys from the BBQ used to build systemd-free Sid based isos instead, but since machinebacon stopped handling the grill, it seems all quiet over there with no new releases in months. I wonder how the BBQ will evolve. In any case, for now, the sysvinit door for Sid seems to be closed for that neighborhood too. Their last isos are already too old and having 4.0 kernels not usable in virtualbox without struggling, tweaking and remastering to make them login the X.

I'm wondering... is there still a way to switch to sysvinit (or any other init system)? The Arch guys can do it. But it seems is not that easy in Debian.

Just found this by chance. Really interesting tricks there.

http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse

By watching this:

https://release.debian.org/transitions/html/libstdc++6.html

It seems the transition will take a loooong while. ie, some months. Still plenty of work to do.

So what's the strategy if any, guys? Anyone distro upgrading? At this point Sid feels like a snapshot, or kinda "up a notch" Jessie. I'm not concerned about being dancing on the bleeding edge at all costs, or necessarily having the latest and greatest. It's more what to do if I want to install something in Vsido or any other Sid distro. Or what to do after installing a new system (typically VMs), dist-upgrade or living on the iso snapshot?

And one more question. @ VastOne. will you keep going with the full updated releases every two weeks schedule during this period?

Is it possible to add the solarized dark and light themes to medit? If yes, how? I cannot find any info about it.

I specially like the light version during daylight. Cobalt and Oblivion are ok for the night but want something easier to the eye than the available ones.

I'm having problems with compton since I re-installed vsido (borked the sidstem) but haven't went over it until now.

compton --config ~/.compton.conf
Error when reading configuration file "/home/paco/.compton.conf", line 36: syntax error


Really?  Here's line 36:

#vsync = "none";

I think I've seen it exactly like this in every single compton.conf file... And haven't touched it since I installed either.

Finally

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/07/msg00001.html

We use dmo here, thus ffmpeg is a default. But I love to see ffmpeg back into Debian.

@VastOne: Any intention or plans to switch to Debian packages or will be going on with dmo? Though...

QuoteWe'll try
our best to make this happen in time for stretch.

Two years or so for the next stable. I wonder how long will it take to hit Sid.