a wanderer in transit » trackpoint http://www.li-ping.com/transit Tue, 25 May 2010 12:38:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Jaunty Adventures – Part 4: Round Up http://www.li-ping.com/transit/2009/07/06/jaunty-adventures-part-4-round-up/ http://www.li-ping.com/transit/2009/07/06/jaunty-adventures-part-4-round-up/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:08:17 +0000 ping http://www.li-ping.com/transit/?p=41 Trackpoint.Configuring the trackpoint sensitivity and speed settings was a piece of cake once you install configure-trackpoint but I am having this annoying problem with losing the trackpoint settings on resume (after a suspend/hibernate). Coming out of suspend/hibernate, the trackpoint will go back to its default extremely sluggish behaviour. And it’s not just me. I have tried everything I could think of (admittedly not much at all) which includes mucking around with the scripts in /etc/acpi/resume.d/ but nothing worked.

After working on this for 3 days, I am raising the white flag. As a workaround, I created a script in the home directory so that I can quickly jump into terminal and re-set the trackpoint settings on resume. This will have to do until something better comes up.

Hotkeys. Getting the hotkeys to work was pretty easy, just follow the instructions at ThinkWiki. FWIW, thinkpad-acpi works for me.

Talking about keys, I have had to re-learn a plethora of keyboard shortcuts. I have always been a keyboard kind of person so mentally re-mapping the Windows keyboard shortcuts (of which I have been using for some 10 odd years) does take a wee bit of effort.

I haven’t decided if I should enable the Windows key on the Thinkpad to make it usable. After a weekend of constant usage, I have, for the most part, worked out most of the keyboard shortcuts I regularly use. But it would be so much more economical to go Win+D than Ctrl+Alt+D just to jump back to Desktop, so I guess I will chalk that down in the new todo list.

I realise that it’s not a balanced view of the whole setup if I didn’t at least note down the stuff that did work.

Stuff that worked

  • Flash – this worked right of the box for me.
  • PDF – Didn’t need to install pdf reader at all, which is a nice change from Windows.
  • Java JRE – Installed it with these instructions.
  • Media Streaming – Excellent guide.
  • Fonts – I did install msttcorefonts because for some reason the Google Reader fonts in Firefox were really ugly (IMHO) and installing msttcorefonts fixed that instantly. And wow, what a difference a little tweaking does.
  • RAR – Just follow this. I used unrar.
  • Upgrade to Firefox 3.5 – I am on the daily ppa using these instructions but I might switch out to using Proposed Updates since 3.5 is apparently there

To be honest, I wouldn’t have made it without some awesome resources online. My favourites are: Ubuntu Forums and ThinkWiki for Thinkpad-specific help.

After all the initial setup, I have drawn up a Nice-to-Have Todo List. This should set me up properly for the tinkering I like to do on the side.

Nice-to-Have Todo List

  • Make vi/vim friendlier
  • Setup svn client
  • Install LAMP
  • Setup WP nightly builds install
  • Enable Win key. Or not.
  • Install Skype, hopefully get webcam to work
  • Install Eclipse
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