WOW, today I realized that Ubuntu 10.10 maverick meerkat was out and that I missed it by couple of days… bad me!!! (btw you have to select “normal updates” instead of “long term release” in your update manager’s settings).
After the update my little eeepc lookt great, and everything worked out of the box without installing a tray control (including wifi, webcam, sound, hotkeys, performance modes, ecc)!!! Great Job guys and the new unity theme is great and optimizes much better the use of vertical screen estate. The only little issue is the two buttons to disable the touchpad (Fn+f3 and the little silver button on the top left) do not work, although they are recognized by the system and give an error about being unable to enable touchpad (ensure xorg.conf is configured properly). A quick workaround is to create a script that enables/disables ONLY (see comment #3) the tapping on the touchpad and to bind it to the silver button using system>keyboard shortcuts, you’ll still get the warning but it does the job.
#!/bin/sh
# toggle synaptic touchpad tap on/off
# get current state
SYNSTATE=$(synclient -l | grep TapButton1 | awk '{ print $3 }')
# change to other state
if [ $SYNSTATE = 0 ]; then
synclient TapButton1=1
elif [ $SYNSTATE = 1 ]; then
synclient TapButton1=0
else
echo "Couldn't get touchpad status from synclient"
exit 1
fi
exit 0

Updating now my hp 2510 with touch screen and excited to see utouch in action…
UPDATE: The system got slower when launching applications (just the launch phase, then they run well)… we’ll see

Categories: tech toysUbuntu

7 Comments

Tuchkata · 2010-10-16 at 13:35

How shoud I save this script and how can I put it as a keyboard shortcut ?

    marco · 2010-10-19 at 02:03

    save it in your home folder for example as a .sh file (remember to set it as executable) then open system > preference > keybord shortcuts, click on a, give a name to the comand and put the full path to the freshly created .sh file.
    then assign a shortcut to the comand et voila…

Tuchkata · 2010-10-19 at 09:59

Just a little correction 🙂 The script should look like this one :
#!/bin/sh
# toggle synaptic touchpad tap on/off
# get current state
SYNSTATE=$(synclient -l | grep TouchpadOff | awk ‘{ print $3 }’)
# change to other state
if [ $SYNSTATE = 0 ]; then
synclient TouchpadOff=1
elif [ $SYNSTATE = 1 ]; then
synclient TouchpadOff=0
else
echo “Couldn’t get touchpad status from synclient”
exit 1
fi
exit 0
Otherwise it’s not a bash script and it is about TapButton (tapping) and not about TouchpadOff 🙂 Thanks a lot man 🙂

    marco · 2010-10-19 at 10:10

    well, thanks for the remark about the first line, i missed it while copy/pasting.
    about Changing TapButton1 to TouchpadOff, It is not what I wanted (beside the fact that it does not work on my machine, I had tryed but it somehow stop working after you click/move/tap or so).
    That is why I disable ONLY the tapping on the touch pad. so the touch pad always works even when you are typing.
    thanks

timdor · 2010-10-21 at 16:43

I have been able to get the touchpad buttons to enable and disable the touchpad with this.
#!/bin/bash
#find the current state of the touchpad
state=`gconftool-2 –get “/desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/touchpad_enabled”`
#if touchpad enabled, turn it off
if [ $state = “true” ]; then
gconftool-2 –set “/desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/touchpad_enabled” –type integer “0”
gconftool-2 –set “/desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/touchpad_enabled” –type bool “false”
fi
#if touchpad not enabled, turn it on
if [ $state = “false” ]; then
gconftool-2 –set “/desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/touchpad_enabled” –type integer “1”
gconftool-2 –set “/desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/touchpad_enabled” –type bool “true”
fi
I am not any kind of hacker. All I did was modify a script I found on the web for a keyboard shortcut to hide the panels.

Joe Ross · 2010-12-02 at 17:33

I have tried both scripts to toggle my touch pad on my eeePc. I created the scipt and saved it to my root directory. I then used nautilus to set it executable. I set the short cuts and for both scripts, the second and last versions listed here, I got an error message. “Error while trying to run (a.sh) which is linked to key ( T)
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Joe

    marco · 2010-12-06 at 19:39

    Hey Joe,
    save my code in your home directory (/home/joe/MyScripts/tap_enable.sh), set it to executable (nautilus or chmod a+x /home/joe/MyScripts/tap_enable.sh) and try to run it from the shell: ./home/joe/MyScripts/tap_enable.sh if (/home/joe/MyScripts/tap_enable.sh
    If it works go to system > preference > Keyboard Shortcut click add give a name and full path (/home/joe/MyScripts/tap_enable.sh) and bind it to a key.
    this should do it
    cheers
    Marco

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