Archive for August 2007
Updated: 26 Aug 2007 08:40 am by
Filed: Geek Stuff • Linux
I finally convinced Deb to start using Linux recently, and for the most part the transition seems to have been reasonably smooth. Part of that is because we have been using Firefox and Thunderbird for several years on both the WinXP and Linux side of our primary computer. Part of it, too, is that GNOME is intuitive enough for most people in moving into Linux that the user interface doesn’t present a significant hurdle.
She recently made a comment about a small annoyance that hadn’t ever registered on me. “The number pad doesn’t work”, she said. “Just hit the ‘Num-Lock’ key”, I responded. “Yeah, but I don’t have to do that when I use Windows!”, she fired back. And, thus, the gauntlet had been thrown down.
After some rooting around in all of the nooks and crannies of the GNOME interface, configuration, and settings, and following a bit of Googling, I came up with this:
- Install package “numlockx”
- Open the GNOME “Sessions” applet (usually found under “Preferences” in the GNOME menus)
- Select the “Startup Programs” tab
- Add a new startup program called “Turn on Num-Lock” that runs
/usr/bin/numlockx on
- Close the Sessions applet
- Sign out; sign back in
Et voila! Annoyance gone… of course, you have to do this in each account where you want the Num-Lock key enabled by default.
Now we wait and see if she notices…
Updated: 08 Aug 2007 05:41 am by
Filed: Life in General
Saw it this past weekend. Loved it. Will probably see it again in the theaters (as well as buying the DVD, when released), which says quite a bit. Ian thought it was the best of the three, but I’m not sure I’d have a hard time deciding which of the three I liked best. A couple of interesting plot turns surprised me…
Updated: 06 Aug 2007 05:48 am by
Filed: Geek Stuff • Linux
With the announcement of the next alpha-level release of Firefox 3, I went ahead and installed it on one of my Linux boxes to give it a quick test. As I run the stock Mozilla versions of the apps, rather than the versions from the Linux distro’s repositories, and use update-alternatives to point to the versions I want use, installing it alongside my stock 2.0.0.6 was quick and easy.
The bottom line: generally positive. Much of the work so far on this new version still remains behind the scenes, but some of the underlying work on the interface is starting to show through. I noticed, for instance, that it seems to be paying attention to the theme I have installed on my GNOME desktop in how it renders form controls like checkboxes, radio buttons, and buttons — in some cases (but to be honest, I haven’t looked at where, because it’s clearly not everywhere — maybe only where the Web app/site in question is not providing any styling on the controls?). There are some (mostly) subtle changes in the appearance of some pages that I visit often enough to make them noticeable (e.g., Google’s Gmail and Reader apps). So far, I haven’t found anything that feels like a show-stopper, and all of the plugins I normally use seem to work OK.
I do have a big caveat to throw on this, however: I don’t have any browser extensions installed on my normal Firefox installation, so I can’t really indicate whether there are significant incompatibilities that might get me there. More to come as I try this on a couple of other systems.