Sunday, March 24, 2013

Get Mac like gesture support for Ubuntu 12.04 | Touchegg for Ubuntu

Ubuntu Gesture Control



Many Ubuntu users would like to have gesture control over some of their applications to make workflows easier, and make the feel of Ubuntu more natural. Apple's multi-touch track-pad and corresponding gesture recognition, is by far the best implementation of gesture tracking we've seen yet. Fortunately developers have created a Unix application written in C+ that attempts to given Ubuntu/Linux users similar multi-touch gesture control over some of their applications.

Install Touchegg and uTouch:



Touchegg combined with uTouch creates an editable config (.conf) file to enable multi-touch gestures and their actions.

- Open the Ubuntu software center and do a search for "touchegg"

- Click install and wait for the installation to be complete.
- If you have not previously installed uTouch you will need to do so. uTouch can also be download and installed from the Ubuntu software center. "This meta package provides a development environment for building gesture aware applications."

Download uTouch gesture recognition from Ubuntu software center
Meta package to install gesture libraries and tools. Utouch

- With both of these packages installed you should now have an editable configuration file.

--> Editing the .conf file.

- The config file can be found in this directory:
~/.config/touchegg/touchegg.conf

- To edit the config file start a new terminal session and enter this command:
gedit ~/.config/touchegg/touchegg.conf

- More details about editing the configuration file can be found at the developer webpage.

Related posts:

- Easy stroke gesture recognition
- How to move Ubuntu 12.04 unity launcher bar


Friday, March 8, 2013

'sudo apt-get update error', slow mirror: Ubuntu 12.04

When attempting to update the newest long term release of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, some users have experienced 'sudo apt-get update' error when trying to update. One reason for this message to appear could be that the mirror you are trying to download updates from does not serve Ubuntu 12.04 updates yet. Also some users may be experiencing unusually low download speeds of updates. This slowness has been alleviated by the ability to select the update mirror closest to your location.

apt-get: Using closest mirror

To configure apt-get to use a good mirror based on your location place the below text into the first line of /etc/apt/sources.list

deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise main restricted universe multiverse 
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse 
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse 
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-security main restricted universe multiverse

This should be all that is needed to get updates from the closest mirror geographically.

apt-get: Closest mirror GUI

To download packages from the best server you will need to change/update a few settings in the Ubuntu Software Center application.

1. Begin by launching the software center.

2. Select edit from the menu bar, then select Software Sources. ..
Software Sources
3. Click the drop down arrow for the Download From options.
Software Sources
4. Choose other.
choose a download server ubuntu 12.04
5. Click "Select Best Server."
6.  Software center will now perform a series of tests to find the best mirror for your location.

testing of download servers
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Monday, March 4, 2013

Add gesture recognition to Ubuntu 12.04 with Easystroke Gesture Recognition Software

launcher icon for easystroke gesture recognition
 

Easystroke Gesture Recognition



Many Ubuntu users would like to have gesture control over some of their applications to make workflows easier, and make the feel of Ubuntu more natural. Apple's multi-touch trackpad and corresponding gesture recognition, is by far the best implementation of gesture tracking we've seen yet. Easystroke however, is a fair contender with the mac gesture recognition. Easystroke allows users to create gestures with their mouse that will perform specified actions, such as open a web browser or view mail.

Installing Easystroke is surprisingly easy for such a powerful application. The package is available from the Ubuntu Software Center, and can be found simply by search for "easystroke" or "gesture".
easystroke gesture recognition available in the Ubuntu Software Center
The best part about this package is that it is completely free! The installation process is begun by clicking install in the Software Center. After the package has been successfully installed a launcher icon is created and automatically added to the navigation bar on the left of the screen.
General Usage:

Defining Actions:



Say you want to use gestures to switch tabs in Firefox. Click on the tray icon to open the program's configuration dialog and then Add Action to define your first action. An editable text field appears showing the preliminary name of the gesture, Gesture 1. Change that to tab-left, then select Key in the type column and press the key combination that goes one tab to the left, namely Ctrl+Page Up (you could also use Ctrl+Left, but that won't work in some other apps such as gnome-terminal). Now click on Record Stroke, hold down the middle button and move your mouse to the left. Of course you could have just as well used any other shape, including something curvy. A tab-right gesture can be defined in the same way, this time moving the mouse to the right (the key combination is Ctrl+Page Down, by the way). If you open a Firefox window with a bunch of open tabs, you can now switch tabs just by drawing the gestures you just defined, without having to move you mouse to the other end of the screen). 


easystroke actions tab
sourceforge.net


Map Mouse buttons to keyboard shortcuts:



If you have a mouse button that you don't need, you can use easystroke to remap it to any command or keyboard shortcut. Just add the button as an additional button (or use the gesture button if you don't want to use gestures). Since you don't want to use the button for gestures, select "Instant Gestures" on the bottom of the button dialog. To assign an action to the button, just press the button when recording a new gesture. To assign a modifier to the mouse button, you can use the "Ignore" action type.

Mimic Scroll Wheel using a Button:



If you don't have a scroll wheel, you can make easystroke emulate one by pressing a button and moving the cursor. Add the button as an additional button of type "instant gestures" as above, and record a new gesture by clicking the button, then change the action's type to "Scroll".

Find more tips/tricks and application details at the developer page

Source:


Friday, March 1, 2013

How to enable hibernation: Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10+

ubuntu 12.04 power menu suspend hibernate
In Ubuntu 12.04 and newer software releases, hibernation has been disabled by default due to various bug issues. Hibernation is disabled by default only if the users hardware is not certified to work with hibernation. Only disabling this feature on known nonfunctional hardware may have been a better way to go, rather than disabling it for mostly all users.


Reasons for disabling Suspend/Hibernate:


One of the main reasons Suspend and Hibernate have been disabled by default in Ubuntu 12.04 and newer is because of the notion that Suspend and Hibernate often do not work on newer hardware models without extensive software fixes. This is to be argued with, as many Ubuntu users will say that they have never had a problem with the  Suspend and Hibernate features in previous releases, and still do not. Another reason given was that, "The nature of Suspend/Hibernate bugs is that while they can be fixed for individual machines, the only feasible way to prevent them from occurring, again and again with new hardware models, is for hardware to be certified (mpt)." This is also controversial because, many Ubuntu users would have rather had a "blacklist" than a "whitelist". Ubuntu developers also thought that for the Ubuntu OS to contain a Suspend feature that does not work is 'unprofessional', and having a hibernate function that does not work, and has the potential to destroy data, is even worse.


Enable Hibernate:

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It is possible to enable hibernation on Ubuntu 12.04 and later, but requires editing of the enable-hibernate file. Before attempting to enable hibernation it is highly recommended that you test whether it will work correctly on your machine. To do this, start a session of terminal and run the following command as a super user.

sudo pm-hibernate

terminal session test for Ubuntu 12.04 hibernate compatibility to enable hibernation

If your system starts again you are most likely safe to perform the override. To do so, start editing:

sudoedit /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla

Fill the file with this:


[Re-enable hibernate by default] 

Identity=unix-user:* 

Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate 

ResultActive=yes
Save by pressing Ctrl+O and exit nano by pressing Ctrl+X
Restart and hibernation should be enabled.

If the hibernate option is not yet available in the power menu run:

sudo update-grub


Disable Suspend Button:


For as many users that would like to enable the suspend/hibernate button, some of them may want to disable it. This is for them.

From terminal start an edit session:

sudoedit /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.disable-suspend.pkla

Fill it with this:


[Disable suspend by default] 

Identity=unix-user:* 

Action=org.freedesktop.upower.suspend 

ResultActive=no
Save by pressing Ctrl+O and exit nano by pressing Ctrl+X.
It should be gone as soon as you view the shutdown menu.

Related:
Sources:
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