Multimedia Keyboards and Linux

This is something I didn’t intend to do. When I bought my new keyboard I was after an ergonomic design to reduce the strain of typing. Any other features were a case of “oh um that’s nice”. But now I’m addicted.

I got a Microsoft Natural 4000 which is one of their ergonomic designs with a raised centre area that slopes away towards the sides. It has a front support which makes it slope towards the monitor too. It sounds all wrong. I’ve always had keyboards that went the other way. However it works and works well. It took only a short time to get used to the new position but it felt more comfortable straight away.

One day I was looking at all the other keys across the top and human nature being what it was I started poking at them. I was surprised to find some worked under Ubuntu. But only a couple, the mail and volume up and down seemed to be it. When I loaded Fedora I found the situation was the same with Gnome but nothing worked with KDE. I started to wonder why and did some research.

I found this site that talked about lineak. I found it is in the Fedora repositories and installed it. I followed the details he provided and found my keyboard was supported. Soon I had a few more keys working. The web/home and the search key still didn’t work but all the audio controls work with Amarok and the calculator key started kcalc. Even the forward and back keys worked with Amarok.

Following the info in that post I used xev to check the codes for the 2 keys that weren’t working and found the wrong codes for my keyboard was in the /etc/lineakkb.conf file. When I fixed that they started to work. The correct codes are 178 for the web/home key and 229 for the search key, it seems they changed during an upgrade to the design.

Using xev I also found that the Favourites keys do not report keycodes so they probably can’t be made to work.

What about negatives? Well there are a couple. It appears that lineak is not currently under development. There has been no new work for some time and no new keyboards are being added to the configuration. However it is easy to add your own, see the post mentioned above for details.

Second problem is it takes a while to load the configuration when booting up. This isn’t a major problem unless you reboot or close and open new sessions regularly.

There are some other options that I haven’t tried yet. Quirk seems to concentrate on laptops. Another option is keytouch which appears worth a look although it doesn’t support my keyboard (yet!?).

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Tags: ubuntu, fedora, kde, keyboard, lineak,

Putting On the Fedora (for Real This Time)

Previously I posted about setting up a test Fedora 8 installation to see if it could work as my primary system. I was intending to replace my existing Ubuntu Feisty system and had to decide between Fedora and Gutsy. Well the decision was easy and now Fedora 8 is now my main system.

Generally I was pleased with Ubuntu but it had some problems as I detailed earlier. The only problem that was fixed in the upgrade from Feisty to Gutsy was the OpenOffice Base issue. USB sound and the scanner problems still exist. To be fair usb sound is a problem in most Linux distros and still exists to some extent in Fedora. And there are fixes for the scanner problems on the forums.

Installing Fedora went well, my hardware was mostly set up correctly. There were a couple of things to sort but I was generally happy. I selected all of the applications I wanted at installation and didn’t include what I didn’t want (like games). I selected to install both KDE and Gnome. After installation I had to run the updates and  force it to detect my second printer.

The usb sound problem exists in that I don’t have system sounds although they work when tested. This is no real loss as I usually end up turning them off. More importantly I have sound in all the applications I have tested including Firefox which is something I couldn’t get with Ubuntu.

The most serious problem was the operation of my Wacom graphics tablet. It worked fine with Ubuntu and was recognised but not configured correctly under Fedora 8. Although it worked it was jumpy and couldn’t access the whole screen. I searched the forums and found a fix and after editing xorg.conf it appears to be working as it was previously.

Ubuntu wins in terms of package manager. The default Synaptic is without a doubt the best package manager out there. The Fedora option is slow and clunky by comparison. Adding support for mp3 and similar codecs is more difficult in Fedora too. Unlike Ubuntu it doesn’t give you the option, you have to find and install them yourself. Fortunately the forums and other sites have all you need. The Fedora8 Tips and Tricks site was very useful for this and similar issues.

I have been using both KDE and Gnome and now seem to have settled on KDE. This is probably not surprising as many of my default applications are KDE ones. Krusader and digiKam are good examples. They work well under Gnome so it probably shows I prefer the KDE way of doing things.

So is that the end of Ubuntu for me? Well no as I have installed Gutsy as a test system and intend to install KDE 4 on it and give that a try. Wonder where that will lead?

Scanning Text with Linux

I have posted previously about scanning film with Linux using Vuescan. It may not be a FOSS application but it is about the best scanner tool I have used. Recently I finally got a flatbed scanner that is compatible with Linux, a Canon Lide 25, a basic but useful unit that has some good reviews.

I needed to scan and OCR a couple of documents and as I have Vuescan that is what I used. I was surprised by the speed and accuracy of the scan. I had text files of each document with a minimum of errors, mainly place names that wouldn’t be in a dictionary, in a few seconds.

After doing a little research I found the general opinion is Linux doesn’t have a good OCR application. This may be true of open source but if you are willing to invest a few dollars there is a solution.

Putting On the Fedora

As I have been having a few problems with Ubuntu on my desktop and I had read some good reports on Fedora 8 I decided to install a test copy. I used Fedora for a while some time ago, FC3 if I remember right and although I liked it it had some stability issues and it soon was replaced.

What problems do I have with Ubuntu? I have purchased a Canon lide25 scanner and there is a known problem with it under Ubuntu but there are work arounds in the forums. Also I never solved the USB sound problem. While it works under Rhythmnbox it doesn’t in Firefox and other programs. The OpenOffice Base problem mentioned a few days ago seems to be only in version 2.2 under Ubuntu. I have Feisty but none of these appear to have been fixed under Gutsy.

So I have installed a test Fedora on the same computer with Ubuntu (and XP). Here are a few first impressions.

I like Anaconda,the install program, as it gives me options for what will be installed. I can select to install only those things I need and not everything. This is how install programs should be. Why should someone else who doesn’t know what I want to use the system for select the programs I will have? The installation proceeded without any problems and it finished with an initial boot of the system and final configuration which included creating a user login.

It had recognised most of my hardware without problems. The display adapter and monitor were correctly set up and at the proper resolution. The desktop effects work as they do under Ubuntu. Both my scanners were available and working. Only one printer was detected, an old Epson inkjet which connects to the parallel port needed to be set up manually but only to the extent of making it autodetect then it was fine. The internet connection (not wireless) worked. So far so good.

To be fair it wasn’t perfect. Although it added XP to Grub the Ubuntu installation, which is on a second hard drive, was not included. I had to edit the menu.lst file. It then was accessible without problems. This was probably the most serious problem as Ubuntu is still my main system.

Another problem was during boot it was looking for ata3 and ata4 and would retry a number of times before failing. Once it was past there it ran fine. We will get back to that one.

OpenOffice Base was not part of the original installation for some reason. I added it and it didn’t have the problem I experienced with Ubuntu. I was able to create a new table and form easily.

The USB sound card appears to work everywhere as it should.

The update manager reported there were a large number of updates available and I wasn’t going to install them. This is only a test system and either way it will be removed after a short time. If I like it it will be installed as my main system. If not it will just be gone. However the update included a new kernal and the forums reported that fixed the boot problems (see we did get back to it!). So I installed the updates and a couple of hours later I had a working system that booted without problems.

So where to now? I will use it for a while and try out all the things I regularly do and see how it goes. So far I am impressed but we will see how it is after being used for a few days. I will report back.

Fedora 8 runs well and everything appears to work and without the fixes I had to do under Ubuntu and isn’t that how it should be?

Handling Data

I have been using OpenOffice for sometime. OpenOffice is the free fully featured office application that is available for Windows, Macs and Linux. It is the default office application in most Linux distros. It is compatible with Microsoft Office formats. As such it is a viable alternative to MS Office without the expense.

Like most people I guess my main use is Writer and Calc, the word processor and spreadsheet elements of OpenOffice. I have made a little use of Base, the database element. It is the newest part of OpenOffice and in some ways it shows. However it is quite capable of accomplishing what many users need. I have had few problems with it before.

When I tried to create a new database today I struck an unusual problem. After creating a table I tried to create a view using the wizard. The wizard ran fine but wouldn’t save. It gave no errors just sat there. The screen wasn’t locked or anything, I could cancel out without problems.

After doing a search I couldn’t find any similar problems but a few people mentioned their preference for using Sun Java instead of the free or other versions. I installed and tested with first version 6 and later version 5 and in both cases the wizard wouldn’t even run. I restored the free version and I was back to the former situation where the wizard ran but wouldn’t save.

Fortunately I had access to another system on my dual boot computer and it worked fine there. I am now not sure what to try next. Any ideas are welcome.