Dell Duo Setup Guide

[Trooper_Max]

A little late, but I just noticed in the package manager GUI you can select unclutter and in the menu go to Package > Configure... and it gives you the option to set whether unclutter starts automatically.

You can also right click on it and hit Properties and there is an Installed Files tab that will show you its files (from which you can probably guess how it starts up).

No need to use Perl like that other thread suggests... you can just edit the config file:

# /etc/default/unclutter - configuration file for unclutter

# Set this option to 'true' if you want to start unclutter
# automagically after X has been started for a user.
# Otherwise, set it to 'false'.
START_UNCLUTTER=true

# Options passed to unclutter, see 'man unclutter' for details.
EXTRA_OPTS="-idle 1 -root"

~Troop

[ninjaaron]

Yeah, That's actually what I did too. I didn't really read the post. I saw it said something about perl. I just went to the config file and read it.

In other news, I tried Natty Alpha 2 on my Duo (which uses kernel 2.6.38 ), and it still has the weird glitch where the cursor goes up in the corner no matter where you touch the screen. Furthermore, the fix in this thread didn't fix it there. I didn't try anything else, since I don't want to make a big time investment in setting up an Alpha where the window manager crashes every five minutes (compiz!). Brand new xorg stack, you know.

So, I couldn't really see if multi-touch working since everything was just up in the corner anyway. I didn't see any signs of two pointers popping up, but they could have been on top of each other, or maybe only one finger gets a pointer (or maybe it needs the driver from the eeepc PPA, which I didn't try, since the mouse was just going up in the corner anyway).

Also: Alpha 2 is totally unusable, but it's at least starting to look cool. I liked it a lot when it wasn't making me terrificly angry.

[w1ll1am]

There is also a new theme for onboard that I made, which is selected by default, and I also made offensive remarks about the onBoard bundled themes (see settings, 7.2). The theme can be turned off.

How did you make a custom theme?

[leobuntu]

In other news, I tried Natty Alpha 2 on my Duo (which uses kernel 2.6.38 ), and it still has the weird glitch where the cursor goes up in the corner no matter where you touch the screen. Furthermore, the fix in this thread didn't fix it there.

Sounds like you need to take additional steps to make Alpha2 working with multitouch:

https://www.libavg.org/wiki/index.ph...ltitouch_Setup

HTH

[Trooper_Max]

How will we know if multitouch works anyway? Should we see two pointers if we tap the screen with two separate fingers? From what I've read, uTouch is the project that provides multitouch gestures, but I've been having trouble finding any sort of explanation of exactly what all the gestures are (though there are some neat videos, but I'm guessing the lack of details is because uTouch is really just an API and so the gestures that are setup with it will be system/application-specific).

I'd like to see multitouch window resizing similar to the pinch-to-zoom that is common in smartphones. Maybe have to press a finger down on the title bar first, then slide a second finger away from the first to make a window bigger, or toward the first to make the window smaller... maybe even rotate to rotate windows? That'd be kinda neat and something you can't normally do by default, but probably not very useful. Maybe pinch completely to close windows. Two finger flick the title bar toward the system bar to minimize/hide? Wouldn't even need buttons to use the buttons for this stuff anymore...

Also, if anyone is brave, you can find new kernel releases here:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

That'll allow you to try newer development kernels without necessarily trying natty. There is a 2.6.37-rc2 (release candidate) kernel available for Maverick as .deb packages you can install using dpkg or if you just double click them in nautilus I think the Ubuntu Software center will offer to install them for you. I imagine they will update your GRUB, but if not, you may have to do this manually. I'll probably try this tonight, if not on my Duo at least on my dual-touchscreen Libretto.

Found the kernels from this thread:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=40185

Mainly, be sure to install the headers package for all architectures first, then the headers package for your architecture (i386 or amd64), then the image for your architecture (i386 or amd64).

Also, I looked at the source code to unclutter (using apt-get source) thinking about trying to develop a version of it that would act differently depending on which mouse device was last used, and it is a little more complicated than I anticipated, but I may still try to come up with a way to tweak it soon. I'm just not very familiar with X programming yet.

Edit: Also, this site has some useful xrandr information: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2 Might be neat to figure out how to get a function key to rotate the screen...

~Troop

[ninjaaron]

Edit: Also, this site has some useful xrandr information: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2 Might be neat to figure out how to get a function key to rotate the screen...

~Troop

Easy:
Compiz Settings Manager > Commands

add a command for xrandr or a to run a rotation toggle script. Go to the bindings tab and select what ever shortcut you like.

After you get that working, you can come back and tell me why you would ever want to rotate the screen while you were using the keyboard


I'll checkout the new kernel. More later.
Edit: New Kernel installed. Nothing is broken, but no multitouch out of box. Let's see...


PS: if you don't want to write a rotation toggle script, download my tarball in post #227 and follow the instructions. It will sync unclutter, screen rotation, and keyboard size for you. You can obviously link that to a key-binding in compiz as well.

[ninjaaron]

How did you make a custom theme?

Well the instructions say you can use Inkscape to do it. This is a lie. onboard doesn't support some of the features that inkscape automatically saves with. Inkscape actually breaks onboard layout files because it builds groups into the file

I opened the svgs and xml (.onboard) files in a gedit and twiddled with numbers until I was satisfied. It was not fun, but it goes fast once you get the hang of it, with "replace all" and things like that. It's actually faster than inkscape for some of that stuff... Just have to brush up on your hex color codes .

However, onboard's svg interpreter doesn't read things like gradients and rounded corners; just boxes, strokes, colors, and IDs.

Believe me, if I could have use gradients and rounded corners, I would have. I reported it as a "bug" on their launchpad site. I feel like the people who wrote this program have never had to look at it for more than five minutes... or I hope not, at least. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

[ninjaaron]

Edit:
Alright guys, my "touch/type" thing has gone official. I made a seprate thread for it and touchscreen interface tweaks. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...9#post10442849

[Trooper_Max]

Easy:
Compiz Settings Manager > Commands

add a command for xrandr or a to run a rotation toggle script. Go to the bindings tab and select what ever shortcut you like.

After you get that working, you can come back and tell me why you would ever want to rotate the screen while you were using the keyboard

Hey, you never know when you might want to do some upside down computing

Really, I was just thinking of it as a hit a button before/as you flip it into tablet mode type of thing. Supposing that you always used it in portrait layout while in tablet mode, you wouldn't necessarily want to devote screen space in the form of a launcher to toggling the layout. The function key would be available as you're converting either way (or before/after). Auto would be better of course.

And yeah, I've been meaning to try out your scripts, just haven't gotten around to it yet. But I looked in the other thread and it looks pretty nice... I didn't think onboard was necessarily ugly, it just wasn't pretty, your theme is definitely much better. I'll try and post in your other thread once I've tried it out and played with it a little.

EDIT: I am also curious about the potential of Gnome Do, but I've only used it a little before... It's streamlined for a keyboard interface though, might be interesting to think about what a system similarly streamlined for touch would look like. I also recognized Docky, but have you tried Avant Window Navigator?

~Troop

[ninjaaron]

... you wouldn't necessarily want to devote screen space in the form of a launcher to toggling the layout...

my thoughts exactly! That's why I have it on a hidden panel.

But yeah, I find that I often want to change orientations in "tablet mode" in any event. Portrait is great for reading ebooks and veiwing certain types of media. It's a bit narrow for most websites, since it's a wide-screen display and all. For me, It's nice to have the option to rotate at any time. Course, you can just add the launcher to the menu somewhere, then you don't have any problem either way.

EDIT: I am also curious about the potential of Gnome Do, but I've only used it a little before... It's streamlined for a keyboard interface though, might be interesting to think about what a system similarly streamlined for touch would look like. I also recognized Docky, but have you tried Avant Window Navigator?

~Troop

Gnome Do, basically just lets you open stuff really, really fast. It's nothing fancy. You don't notice it until it's not on and you feel like your dragging through the mud, navigating through a menu. There are also extetions to make it control your media player and execute shell commands, do google searches, and whatever. It's pretty nice. Gnome Do also works well with the onscreen keyboard, and sometimes I turn it on while in "touch mode."

I'm trying to get a similar level of functionality out of my drawer-based menu. If you open all of the draws, they stay open, so you really just have to click the menu button after that and all the programs are right there. The fly in my ointment is that they all close again when you logout. Still, not too bad. Course, touching the screen is inherently faster than navigating somewhere with a mouse or touchpad, so that's also something to consider. I have my most used touch mode apps pinned to the dock, Firefox and my E-Book Reader (Which is so great to be able to use. I'm loving this e-book stuff!).

As for other docks, I like docky because it has the "panel mode," which I like because it gives me lots of empty space where I can click to bring it up when it's hidden without accidentally opening a program or changing focus. I also like it because it's the lightest in terms of resources. I tried AWN a two or three years back, and there was some reason I didn't get along with it (which I have forgotten), but I'm sure the program is different now. I really liked Cairo dock when I tried it, but it seems to be a bit more demanding of resources, and docky does exactly what I wanted: It replaces the window list and the clock on the panel (and I have it monitoring system activity now too). It has a few simple extra widgets if you like. It also does intelle-hide, which I think is great, though I think the others do that too.

I'm a freak about managing system resources, which isn't necessaries a bad thing with a netbook, so so alot of my tweaks are to keep the interface from taking over the system resources.

Some programs still open a bit slowly, however. At some point, I might wipe the system and see how it preforms with a 64bit kernel, probably in April, if not before. It uses twice the ram, but it still only boots to about 450KB, and I still hardly ever use more than 1.2GB on my more powerful system with a 64bit kernel, even when I'm using a lot of tabs in firefox, Open Office, and a few giant PDFs open.

The duo has 2GB, and there is always swap space, so it should work alright, and it may improve speed and performance for some things. As it is, I've still haven't gotten ram usage up to 50%. The CPU, on the other hand, is pretty heavily taxed at times, and 64bit might help that. I dunno.