Adjusting Touchpad Delay With Syndaemon

So I've been on openSUSE now for about 3 days and I'm really enjoying it. Whenever you set up a new system or even do a simple upgrade, you often end up with little annoyances. Maybe something different in the sound, or the screen resolution changes, or in my case, the laptop touchpad is bouncing the cursor all over the screen while you type.

This can be really annoying and cause some serious mistakes while typing. For instance, you're writing a blog post and the cursor ends up in the middle of another sentence. Worse yet, how about an accidental highlight and delete, losing everything you've typed. My personal favorite and the one that gets me cussing like Yosemite Sam going head to head with Bugs Bunny, is the cursor going over the publish button while social networking on say Tsu.com and your post being submitted before you were through writing it. That just about covers everything I've endured in the last three days with this mild inconvenience. So what do you do ?

syndaemon

Syndaemon is the way to add a delay to your touchpad so your cursor isn't bouncing all over the screen while you're typing. For full instructions, and a list of options, just open the terminal program of your choice and type :

man syndaemon

I kept it basic, and used a command to give a 2 second delay.

syndaemon -i 2 -d

So this is what we did. syndaemon starts the program -i is the interval 2 is the amount of seconds -d runs the program in the background as a daemon. So for the tweeted version , the above command gives you a two second delay on the touchpad while your typing. Two seconds believe it or not seems a bit long, you might want to switch it to 1, play around with it and see what your comfortable with.

If you're having this problem I hope this helps. This worked in openSUSE 13.2 and I hope it works for you.It was a minor annoyance but I'm glad it's gone. Thanks for reading !

It's cold out there, busting out the tux hoodie !

It's cold out there, time to bust out the tux hoody ! Found this on Amazon a couple years back. Here's a similar one.

A Monthly Update 5 Months Late

Wow, I can't believe I haven't posted here for a little over 5 months. That's just too long. Anyway, things are going great, still using Linux full time and loving it.

Last night I crashed my Fedora trying to install Pipelight so I could try to watch an Amazon movie. I wasn't overly crazy about installing it in the first place. It needs Wine to run, and I really didn't want that in my computer. From what I understand Wine can make you computer vulnerable to many of the same vulnerabilities Windows has. NO THANKSi!

So I screwed up while installing it, the system crashed and ... I decided to try a new distro ! I think a little  over two years on the same distro is enough and I wanted to try something new. I am now a proud openSUSE user.

I installed the openSUSE 13.2 and the install went really smoothly. As usual the broadcom drivers were a bit of a pain the ass but after doing it a few times now, I got it configured fairly quickly. I found this tutorial here, and I had no problems at all. https://forums.opensuse.org/content.php/157-Broadcom-firmware-is-needed-for-b43-but-I-have-no-network-an-easierwork-around

After that, I spent the day doing a little system hardening and removing things I'm not using like, telnet, cups, and few other programs. I still want to read more about openSUSE and hardening the system. I got use to SElinux and openSUSE uses AParmor <-- might have that spelled wrong, but it's late and I'm tired.

I'm embarrassed to say I never finished the linux course I was taking. I've got a lot of stuff going on here and just haven't had time. There will be more on that in later posts. However, there are a few differences with openSUSE compared to Fedora so I think I'm going to try and finish the course, and I'll be posting here.

So for the monthly update that's five months over due, I plan on posting here more. I'll be posting about openSUSE, and linux related stuff. I'll be finishing that course now to help me get more comfortable with using openSUSE and posting regular updates here.

The Code : Story Of Linux Documentary.

Great video, the title says it all. The Code : The Story of Linux. Found this in my G+ Stream and thought it was great. Thanks +JayVan Geli

Chapter 4 LFS101x Introduction to Linux - REVIEW

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon in Western New York where I live. I woke up this morning to cloudy grey sky and the most excellent cool breeze blowing through the open windows. Perfect day to do a chapter of the LFS101x Introduction to Linux course.

I'm now on chapter 4 and so far so good.The first 4 chapters have been really basic, but I would highly recommend this course to any new Microsoft to Linux converts out there. A friend however, told me that the course really picks up after chapter 4. I'm gonna start chapter 5 this week.

Anyway the course is really enjoyable, and I had the perfect day to relax and focus on a chapter of it. A big disappointment for me is that the course is very Gnome oriented. I currently enjoy KDE, and don't really plan on switching anytime soon. I've used Gnome till Gnome 3 and then made the switch to KDE and don't think I'll ever look back. 

For me the fact that they use Gnome is not a big deal. I can usually connect the dots and figure out the slight differences between Gnome and KDE. For a new user however this might be problematic, or at the very least, extremely confusing. 

I like the way they broke the labs into Fedora, Debian and Suse sytems. It would of been nice if they were a little more diverse with the desktop environment. For instance, maybe Gnome, KDE and XFCE.  Or at least use KDE with the openSuse lab seeing its the default desktop for that distribution. One reason I've been thinking about making the move to openSuse. Anyway, that's my only complaint about the course so far. They should of used a couple different desktops besides just Gnome. 

So chapter 4 covers the Gnome desktop. Topics include logging in, changing users, putting the computer into sleep mode, and screen locking. Something new I learned today is that you can lock the screen using ctrl-alt-l . Walk away from your computer, lock screen, use root password to log back in. This comes in handy if you have to step away from your computer and you're in a room full of people you may not entirely trust. Unfortunately in my world this happens more than I'd like to admit ;-)

The chapter also gets into a little customization and shows you how to change your desktop background, and change your computer theme. 

Chapter 4 also covers basic operations. Launching programs, getting around Nautilus (Dolphin if you use KDE), finding drives, usb, cdroms, etc. 

Finally, there was a little about using Gedit to edit a file, deleting files, and recovering files. All fairly basic straight forward stuff. 

I'll be starting Chapter 5 next week sometime. I'm not sure if I'm going to review each chapter but I may cover some of the interesting points covered in each chapter I read. 

Thanks for reading and if you want to find out about signing up for the course, check out my previous post with the sign up link here.

The First 3 Chapters of LFS101x : Introduction to Linux

Last night I started the LFS101x : Introduction to Linux course and today I got through the 3rd chapter. The course is an edX course online and so far it's pretty interesting.

 Chapter 1 gets into a little information about the Linux Foundation. I found that pretty interesting. I often wondered exactly what they did, and chapter 1 explains that. 

Chapter 2 is mostly about Linus Torvalds the founder of Linux. The chapter lays out a brief history of Linux, a little information about Linus Torvalds, how Linux got started, how its created, and how its works. The chapter is brief but interesting. 

Chapter 3 covers installation, choosing a Linux based O.S. and a little about boot loaders, file system structure, partitioning and the boot process itself. 

So far so good. The first 3 chapters were very basic, yet very informative. The 3rd chapter already started getting a little more detailed though. Explaining how the bios works, and the way the init file starts and shuts down the system cleanly. I knew a little about bios, and now I know a little more. I can already tell the course is going to be very helpful in learning a lot of the finer details about using the O.S. 

On a final note I thought it was really cool how the course is laid out and explained. They break the course tutorials into three categories showing you how it would work on a Debian system using Ubuntu, a Fedora system using CentOS, and a SUSE system using the openSUSE. I thought that was really cool. 

If you want to find out more about the course or sign up yourself you can click here. The course is free to audit, and I'm really happy I signed up. If you're new to Linux or someone who just wants to know a little more than how to point and click in an Xwindows environment I highly recommend this course. 

Just Started the Linux Course at EDx

I forgot all about this. I wanted to really improve my Linux skills and I found this free course. You can either get certified for a fee or audit the class for free. I'm cheap and of limited financial means so I opted to audit the course.

I forgot all about it, and just remembered the course started at the beginning of this month. It's a learn at your own pace course, and the courses are all laid out for you. Good news seeing I'm a full month behind the course start date. 

Anyway, consider this a monthly update. As I learn I'll post some updates here. A friend of mine is taking the course and said it starts out real simple and covers the basics and then gets more and more involved. I'm so excited. I just want to get my Linux skills to surpass my Windows skills.

Here's a screen shot of the course and if your interested in signing up, I think sign ups are still available  Click here. 

 

Screen shot of the edX Introduction to Linux course !!! Triple exclamation marks because I'm super excited !!!