I followed a submission to reddit the other day highlighting a few choice plugins for gedit, as I am fond of using the default GNOME text editor. One plugin in particular caught my eye, the document words autocompletion plugin, written by Perriman. Retyping my inventive variable names (not to mention the oft flowery default php function names) is both error-prone and onerous and this plugin is the perfect remedy.

The following applies to Ubuntu Intrepid. I’m using 64 bit, but there’s no difference for 32 bit.

The plugin is not packaged in with the gedit-plugins package and needs to be compiled. It depends on quite a few packages. I chose to cheat a little when installing the required development libraries by first installing the build dependencies for gedit itself. If you haven’t already installed it, the build-essential package will install the most commonly used compilation tools too:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get build-dep gedit gedit-plugins

Then download the source. The document auto completion plugin depends on Perriman’s gtksourcecompletion, which also needs to be compiled first. The source is available from this Sourceforge page.

Once extracted and in the directory:

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

The plugin itself is also on Sourceforge, the 0.51 version is now on the download page.  Again, once extracted and in the directory:

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

and assuming there are no errors, the plugin should appear in the gedit plugins list (Edit > Preferences > Plugins). Now all I need to do it try to train my left hand pinky not to keep stabbing the tab key for autocompletion!

As a long-time (since Gutsy) follower of Ubuntu bug 99508, the one about the badly drawn window decoration (see right), I was thrilled to see that Nvidia’s 180 Beta driver fixed the problem. The driver is packaged up and available in the alpha of Jaunty’s next release, 9.04. However, running the alpha as your main OS is folly, not to mention a pain in the butt if you just want to get something done and it’s a bit broken at that moment.

One can always install nvidia’s driver from a shell using the installer provided, but I’m always happier using a .deb, and luckily the 180 debs are coming to Intrepid’s backports. Just not yet. So if you want to try the 180 driver, you can use the Jaunty .debs.

I’ve tested it on my laptop under Intrepid, with its integral Nvidia 6100 Go chipset, and it works very well. Some Jaunty testers have reported increased temperatures and odd black spots, but all is ok here. In fact I ran a full screen video on each desktop under compiz (left) without issue.
The debs are available from the Jaunty repos, and the packages required are nvidia-glx-180 and nvidia-180-kernel-source. At present, these contain the 180.11 beta driver – there is a newer one available from nvidia and no doubt the packages in the Jaunty repos will be updated shortly. Once downloaded, a few commands (i386 users will need to alter the architecture part of the filename):

sudo apt-get remove nvidia-glx-177
cd Desktop (if this is where the debs are)
sudo dpkg -i nvidia-180-kernel-source_180.11-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i nvidia-glx-180_180.11-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb


And a reboot and (fingers x!) you’re done

Some significant changes have been happening to the X server over the past couple of releases of Ubuntu. One of the most noticeable alterations has been the removal of the xorg.conf file from the default Ubuntu install (edit – it was removed during the development cycle but reappeared in the release version).

It is a great thing that X is now at the stage where it knows devices well enough to configure them with no user input, but occasionally a device may be incorrectly set up, or one may want to customise beyond default settings.

Such is the case with my synaptics touchpad. I really like the fact that in Linux I can configure the touchpad to trigger a middle mouse button event when it is tapped with 3 fingers. Left click – one finger, right click – two fingers, middle click – three fingers. In addition, I want to be able to disable the touchpad while typing.

In the past, disabling the touchpad temporarily when the keyboard is in use was done by adding a line:

SHMConfig On

to the synaptics device section of the xorg.conf (/etc/X11/xorg.conf), and running the command:

syndaemon -i 0.7 -m 50 -d

at the start of every session (best done by adding it to System>Preferences>Sessions as a new startup program). Things are done slightly differently now, and there is no need to add the line to xorg.conf. Or at least there isn’t if you use the synaptics driver provided by Ubuntu developer William Grant on this forum thread, .deb available here.

You may have to remove the existing driver first:

sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

I had to lock the version to prevent the default Intrepid driver appearing as an update. This can easily be done in Synaptic Package Manager, by searching for synaptics, highlighting the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package and selecting Package>Lock Version. Now after restarting the X server (Ctrl, Alt and Backspace) and issuing the syndaemon command, the touchpad should be disabled when typing without having to enable SHMConfig.

In order to adjust the various custom settings for the  synaptics touchpad, one can enter a section in xorg.conf. One also needs a ServerLayout section, similar to the one below.

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "LeftEdge" "1900"
Option "RightEdge" "5000"
Option "TopEdge" "1400"
Option "BottomEdge" "4500"
Option "FingerLow" "25"
Option "FingerHigh" "35"
Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
Option "MaxTapMove" "220"
Option "ClickTime" "0"
Option "VertEdgeScroll" "1"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "45"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "1"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "45"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.08"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.60"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.003"
Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200"
Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200"
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "3"
Option "TapButton3" "2"
EndSection


Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Inputdevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection


Step forward the rt73 legacy driver….

This “legacy” driver is still supported by Serialmonkey, as I myself witnessed when I found the module no longer compiled on Intrepid’s kernel. Vern, one of the developers, fixed the issue and the module now compiles without complaints. I was approached on the forum by someone wanting to know how to go about using this older module so I thought I’d write a quick how to. There is one already on the ubuntu forums, but it is a little dated and doesn’t include details about WICD.

First the bad news. The legacy driver doesn’t work with network-manager. This is more of a shame now network manager has actually started to justify its extra cpu usage, with decent support for mobile network connections, but there are ways to configure and use those without it.

The howto:

First download the tar.gz file for the rt73 driver (you can find it on the downloads page of the rt2x00 site).

Next download WICD. There is a .deb available. I can’t get version 1.5.3 to work, but others have not had problems. There’s probably a .deb of version 1.4.x floating around the net, if not I have one somewhere (update: here). I personally have to alter the file /opt/wicd/networking.py in version 1.4.2 to get it to work (I comment out line 365 which puts the interface down), but again no-one else seems to suffer with this glitch. You can add wicd to your sources list – I don’t just in case I lose connection and can’t download it when network-manager is removed:

sudo apt-get remove network-manager network-manager-gnome

Next you need to blacklist the existing ralink drivers that Intrepid uses. Edit the file:

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

and add these lines:

#Ralink, we're using the legacy driver now
blacklist rt73usb
blacklist rt2x00usb
blacklist rt2500usb
blacklist rt2x00lib

then remove the modules as they’ll currently be loaded into the kernel:

sudo ifconfig wlan0 down

(I’m guessing your wireless interface is wlan0 – you need to put it down first or the kernel won’t let you unload the module. You can find out for sure what it is called using ifconfig -a)

sudo modprobe -r rt73usb
sudo modprobe -r rt2500usb
sudo modprobe -r rt2x00usb

Okay now we can compile the module. cd to the directory containing the driver you downloaded. Then:

tar -xvzf rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz
cd rt73-cvs-THE_TIMESTAMP/Module/
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe -v rt73

..where THE_TIMESTAMP is the date part of the extracted directory. Then:

ifconfig -a

to find out the name of the interface (probably wlan0)

install and open up WICD and open the preferences. Select “ralink legacy” and type in the interface name in the “wireless interface” box.

Then you should be able to “refresh” and see your network. Add the encryption key if needed and connect.

Remember if it all goes wrong you’ll need to reinstall network manager (try rebooting first!)

sudo apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome

and comment out the lines you added to /etc/modprobe/blacklist (In fact if you’ve successfully loaded the rt73 driver you’ll need to blacklist that instead of the others: blacklist rt73 – in order for it not to conflict with the default Intrepid modules.)