Tag Archives: GNOME

Workarounds for common F18 bugs

6 Replies

I’ve been using the Fedora 18 pre-release for a couple of months now, and am generally happy with how it works.  I filed quite a few bugs, some got resolved, some not.  Here’s a list of things that don’t work as they used to in the past, with workarounds so they may help others:

  • Bug 878619 – Laptop always suspends on lid close, regardless of g-s-t policy: I used to set the action on laptop lid close to lock the screen by default, instead of putting it in the suspend state.  I used to use the function keys or menu item to suspend earlier.  However, with GNOME 3.6 in F18, the ‘suspend’ menu item has gone away, replaced by ‘Power Off’.  The developers have now removed the dconf settings to tweak the action of lid close (via gnome-tweak-tool or dconf-editor).  As described in GNOME Bug 687277, this setting can be tweaked by adding a systemd inhibitor: 
    systemd-inhibit --what=handle-lid-switch \
                --who=me \
                --why=because \
                --mode=block /bin/sh
  • Bug 887218 – 0.5.0-1 regression: 147e:2016 Upek fingerprint reader no longer works: fprintd may not remember the older registered fingerprints, re-registering them is a workaround.
  • Bug 878412 – Cannot assign shortcuts to switch to workspaces 5+: I use keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+F<n>) to switch workspaces.  Till F16, I could assign shortcuts to as many workspaces as are currently in use.  Curiously, with F18, shortcuts can only be assigned to workspaces 1 through 4.  This was a major productivity blocker for me, and an ugly workaround is to create a shell script that switches workspaces via window manager commands: install ‘wmctrl’, and create custom shortcuts to switch workspaces by invoking ‘wmctrl -s <workspace-1>’.  wmctrl counts workspaces from 0, so to switch to workspace 5, invoke ‘wmctrl -s 4′.
  • Bug 878736 – Desktop not shown after unlocking screensaver: This one is due to some focus-stealing apps and gnome-shell’s new screensaver not working together.  I use workrave, an app that helps me keep my eyesight and wrists in relatively good shape.  Other people have complained even SDL windows (games, qemu VMs, etc.) interact badly with the new screensaver.  For my workaround, I’ve set workrave to not capture focus for now.
  • Bug 878981 – “Alt + Mouse click in a window + mouse move” doesn’t move windows anymore: The modifier key is now changed to the ‘Super’ key, so Super + mouse click + mouse move works in a similar way to how using the Alt key worked earlier.  I’m still lacking the window resize modifier that KDE offers (modifier key + right-click+mouse move)
  • Bug 878428 – __git_ps1 not found: I’ve discussed this earlier.

Other than these, a couple of bugs that affect running F18 in virtual machines:

  • Bug 864567 – display garbled in KVM VMs on opening windows: Using any other display driver for the guest other than cirrus works fine.
  • Bug 810040 – F17/F18 xen/kvm/vmware/hyperv guest with no USB: gnome-shell fails to start if fprintd is present: I mentioned this earlier as well: remove fprintd in the VM, or add ‘-usb’ to the qemu command line.

Changing GNOME Default Action for Low Battery

3 Replies

The GNOME default of ‘hibernate’ or suspend-to-disk on very low battery power isn’t optimal for many laptops — hibernate is known to be broken on several hardware setups, it frequently results in file system corruption, and just causes pain.  That, combined with the weird behaviour of the GNOME power manager to put the system in hibernate, even when the battery isn’t low, annoyed me enough to go hunting for a way to change the default.

The GUI doesn’t expose a ‘sleep’ setting; it just offers hibernate and shutdown, so here’s a tip to just put the system to sleep state (suspend to RAM), which is a much well-behaved default for me.

Install dconf-editor, and go to

 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power

and modify the

critical-battery-action

to suspend.

For the curious, the weird behaviour of the GNOME power manager I mentioned above is noted in these bug reports:

Bug 673220 – ‘Critical capacity’ warning on laptop with multiple batteries broken
Bug 673221 – Shutdown action on battery low doesn’t save session
Bug 673222 – More prominent warning, at least 5-10% before battery goes critically low
Bug 673223 – System enters shutdown/hibernate even when power connected but battery low

Stay Healthy By Taking Breaks

Leave a reply

Most of us lead sedentary lifestyles these days — most of our time is spent in front of computers. This slowly is causing a lot of problems people from previous generations haven’t experienced: back aches, knee problems, wrist pains, myopia, among others. And just going to a gym or putting in one hour of physical activity a day isn’t enough. It doesn’t help balance the inactivity over the entire day.

I recently wrote an article in the BenefIT magazine that talks about two tools: Workrave and RSIBreak. Thanks to the publishers, the article is available in pdf format under a CC license.

I’ve tried both the software but have been using Workrave for quite a while now and am quite happy with it. To briefly introduce them: both software prompt the user to take a break at regular intervals. They have timers that trigger at configured intervals asking the user to take a break. Workrave also has some stretching exercises suggested that can be performed in the longer breaks. The shorter (and more frequent) breaks can be used to take the eyes off the monitor and to relax them. Read the article for more details.

I’ve reviewed Workrave version 0.9.1 in the article, though the current version as of now is 0.9.3, which has a few differences from those mentioned in the article. The prime difference is the addition of a ‘Natural Rest Break’ that gets triggered when the screen-saver gets activated, which is nice since if the user walks away from the computer for a prolonged period of time, the rest break in effect has been taken, and the next one is scheduled after the configured duration once the screen-saver is unlocked.

Both software are available in the Fedora repository: Workrave is based on the GTK toolkit (and integrates nicely with the GNOME desktop), whereas RSIBreak is based on the Qt toolkit (and integrates nicely with the KDE desktop). Give these software a try for a cheap but effective way of staying healthy!

This is a post from http://log.amitshah.net/, licensed CC BY-SA.