2010-07-28

Linux on a fujitsu U810 - Lucid setup

As a reminder for anyone upgrading to lucid:

when I booted into X after upgrading to ubuntu lucid, I missed the minimize/maximize/close buttons at the top-right of every window; for some reason, they are not there.

In order to make these buttons reappear, proceed as follows: (info taken from
http://www.baptiste-wicht.com/2010/05/ubuntu-lucid-lynx-buttons-right/)

- start gconf-editor (type gconf-editor at the terminal)

- go to : apps > metacity > general. You’ll see here a key named button_layout with the default value of “close,minimize,maximize:”. To put the buttons like in
the other versions, you just have to edit this value to

:minimize,maximize,close

And then all your windows will have the normal button order at the right of the window title bar.

- if you want to include the window menu, you can change the value to :

menu:minimize,maximize,close

2010-07-24

Linux on a Fujitsu U810, U820 - keyboard lights

short story: it's working !! - keep reading

Some readers of this blog where still missing this feature, so I engaged the daunting task of finding some time and energy to solve this issue. After 5 hours of googling, reading documentation about acpi, linux kernel, reading c code for the linux kernel drivers, googling for ubuntu file repository source files, ... I found the solution, which is very easy:

=> keyboard lights can be easily controlled by accessing the sysfs <=

Since the sysfs is root-only, I have created a small c program, with automatic compile and install, that makes keyboard-lights accessible for any user.

Installation

1 download the fujitsu-kbdlights-0.1.0.tar.gz to any directory in your computer


2 decompress the package (it will create another directory, fujitsu-kbdlights-0.1.0/)
tar zxvf fujitsu-kbdlights-0.1.0.tar.gz


3 compile and install
cd fujitsu-kbdlights-0.1.0
make
sudo make install


4 and in a command shell, you can type

fujitsu_kbdlights on

fujitsu_kbdlights off

fujitsu_kbdlights toggle

fujitsu_kbdlights


5 if you want, you can bind any of the previous commands to a hot-key using any keyboard setup utility

Enjoy typing at night !!

2010-07-20

Linux on a Fujitsu U810, P1620, T1010 - Touchscreen IX

Following the request from several users, and a little bit late, I have adapted the driver to work on systems with kernel-compiled usbhid module.


The problem was that, in certain cases (fedora and other distributions) the usbhid module is compiled in the kernel, not compiled as a module. In these cases, the prior script that performs the correct binding of the device to the fujitsu_usb_touchscreen module was not working. Also, the previous script, even it was working, was not very polite and was not following correct computer initialization procedures.

You can find the new driver here.

To follow installation instructions, go read this previous post.