Linux: May 2007 Archives
If Panorama were getting all worked up over a few wireless access points in schools, what are they going to think of this monster! Look at all the antennas on it! That can't be healthy!
What the Slurp actually does is connect to as many wifi networks as it can, up to a maximum of six. It then presents all the wifi networks as one super fast connection to your PC. The legality of this is probably questionable in a lot of countries, but it's still a very cool piece of kit.
Anyone who uses a laptop with a Touchpad has probably accidentally touched the Touchpad while typing and had the window focus change on screen. It probably isn't a good reflection on the typing posture being used, but until some comes out with a laptop that has a Microsoft Natural Keyboard built in, my posture isn't likely to improve.
As I have found out though, it's easy to disable a Synaptic Touchpad while typing. First off open up /etc/X11/xorg.conf (or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4) and find the InputDevice Section that looks like:
At the end of this section add:
Section "InputDevice"
Driver "synaptics"
Identifier "Mouse[1]"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
.........
Option "SHMConfig" "on"Save the changes and then restart the X server, in my case I just used Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart it. Syndaemon then has to be setup in order to tell the driver how long the Touchpad has to remain disabled for after typing. To do this run:
syndaemon -i .1 -dThis will disable the Touchpad while typing and keep it disabled for a tenth of a second after you finish typing. The default, if you don't put in the "-i .1", is two seconds which I found way too long. There are a couple of options to get this running automatically. With Gnome, click on the "System" menu, go to "Preferences" and then "Sessions". In the "Startup Programs" tab, click on "New" and put in "syndaemon -i .1 -d" as the command. It can alternatively be added to the ~/.xinitrc file. Once this is done, syndaemon will run on login, and random touching of the Touchpad while typing should no longer be a cause for annoyance.
I have previously moaned about the lack of open source drivers for ATI/AMD cards. AMD have now announced that they will be releasing opensource drivers. I think I will be switching allegiances from Nvidia (who currently have the better binary drivers) to ATI/AMD if they deliver.
