Do it like Windows. Automounting/keyboard layouts/Office

LazyP · 01-08-2006, 10:07 AM

Yesterday my sister asked to use my pc (the only one in the house). She did what she did (from my user account) and after she was finished I thought adding her as a user.
Anyway I added her, made a few tweaks so that KDE looks more like Windows but there are a few things I didn't manage to do.

1. Changing keyboard layouts.
I am Greek (not my choice) thus a lot of typing is done in Greek. Most Win boxes change keyboard layout with Alt+Shift. My sister likes it, I have to keep her happy. Unfortunately KDE disagrees with this combination. I have tried editing xorg.conf like that but it just doesn't work

Code:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "Keyboard0"
Driver      "kbd"
Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option      "XkbLayout" "us+el"
Option      "XkbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll"
EndSection

Is there a way to make it happen?

2. Automounting
Let's face it. The whole mounting-unmounting process is bull* for a day to day user. Most people want things to work. You put in a CD click the icon and see it's contents. You push the eject button of the drive and after a few seconds it pops-out. Luckily Konqui does the first half of the job but he cannot do the second (unmounting). I've heard of submount. Has anyone tried it and what are your comments about it? Very basic though. I hate the idea of automounting so I want it to happen as userspace as possible. If possible I want the automounting to wake only when she logs in.

3. OpenOffice
I have 1.1.5 installed and it gives an interface close to MS Office which is good in this case. However, I have this question. Do you find compatibility with MS Office satisfying? I haven't tested at all this feature. In other words, a .doc will be imported normally? If I save a document as .doc will it be imported normally at MS Office? BTW which is the most suitable option at the Save As dialog: Word 97/2000/XP, Word 95 or Word 6.0?
If I upgrade to OOo 2 will I see a difference in compatibility with the MS suite?

Please help me. I'm new to Linux and she is my first user. If I cannot keep her happy I'll consider myself a bad admin for the rest of my life!

Worse still whenever she wants to use the computer she will boot Windows. The thought is enough to make me feel sick. I already have nausea.

scrupul0us · 01-08-2006, 10:37 AM

I can only help you with point 3... just save for xp compatibility and youll be fine... but always test before something important like a presentation etc...

odevans · 01-08-2006, 09:49 PM

I think support for the M$ file formats is improved in OOo 2.0, it feels like I've had fewer problems. Using the package from linuxpackages at
http://www.linuxpackages.net/pkg_details.php?id=7951

For automounting, grab the dbus, hal and libcap packages from somewhere like Freerock or Dropline GNOME (you still have to go through the right click -> safely remove hardware bit, just like in win32).

MMYoung · 01-09-2006, 12:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by odevans

For automounting, grab the dbus, hal and libcap packages from somewhere like Freerock or Dropline GNOME (you still have to go through the right click -> safely remove hardware bit, just like in win32).

As long as you are using a 2.6 kernel. Hal/dbus won't work with the standard kernel (2.4.31) in Slackware.

Later,
MMYoung

AxelFendersson · 01-09-2006, 12:19 AM

Don't know about the keyboard thing, but I seem to remember KDE has an option somewhere for having multiple keyboard layouts. Whether you can bind that keyboard shortcut to changing the layout, though, I don't know.

Compatibility with MS Office is fairly good in OOo 1.1, as long as you don't try to do anything too flashy. It's quite a bit better in OOo 2, though. It's improved in a lot of other ways, too; I'd certainly recommend the upgrade.

As for the mounting thing, I've been fairly unimpressed by Submount. Supermount is better, but not by all that much, but the last I knew it wasn't very well maintained any more. Using hal and dbus (which require udev and a recent 2.6 kernel) is probably the best way to have devices mounted automatically (it's certainly less of a hack than either Submount or Supermount). Unfortunately, I don't really know how to use them other than with GNOME's volume monitor daemon, which wouldn't be much good to you in KDE.

shilo · 01-09-2006, 12:31 AM

Maybe this will help: http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=DBUS

mjjzf · 01-09-2006, 03:16 AM

I have added mount, wireless and shutdown to sudo. My wife kan mount CDs on my PC.

koloth · 01-09-2006, 08:02 AM

Since i'm greek too ("not my choice"? i didn't get that but never mind) so i can help with the keyboard problem:
Option "XkbLayout" "us+el"
should be:
Option "XkbLayout" "us,el"

The rest xorg.conf seems OK.

I don't do automount or anything similar so i can't help you on that but i have to agree with the rest of the guys on OO2 having a much improved support of MS Office files.

cwwilson721 · 01-09-2006, 08:13 AM

For the keyboard layout in KDE, look at Control Center->Regional and Accesibilty->Keyboard Layout

LazyP · 01-09-2006, 10:14 AM

Well the problem with the keyboard layouts was not only because of wrong
syntax in the xorg.conf
Better tell you what happened so that other people will know. The first
time I had tried to set it up I was using the right syntax but I already
had enabled the keyboard layouts from KDE's control center. For some
reason this blocks changing layouts with Alt+Shift or any other
combination stated in xorg.conf. In order to make it work you have to
disable keyboard layouts from the Regional and Accessibility tab of the
Control Center and restart X. Unfortunately I hadn't tested it on another
window manager and after Nvidia's installation the original xorg.conf was
ovewritten.
Anyway this has some drawbacks like I cannot see a little flag according
to my layout on the taskbar anymore but when typing I look more at the
keyboard than at the screen anyway

(BTW the trick with the scroll LED
is really cool!)

Now about submount. This thing works wonders! It builds a kernel module
and a daemon. Now who cares if a module is loaded when it does nothing? I
will make my sister a sudoer so that she can start the submount daemon. In
fact she won't but her login script will just before automatically
starting x. When she logs out she will kill the daemon (again she
doesn't need to know it). This way we're both happy. She doesn't need to
know anything about mounting-unmounting and I don't need to tolerate
automounting. Will it work?

As far as OOo 2 is concerned I'll download it when I get the chance. I've
heard it's less than 80MB so I can put it in my USB stick.

Thank you all for the immediate answers
LazyP

PS: The submount is more like a cheap trick. If you plan to count on some kind of automounting follow AxelFendersson's and shilo's advice. In my occasion it just does the trick with minimal work.

raska · 01-09-2006, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwwilson721

For the keyboard layout in KDE, look at Control Center->Regional and Accesibilty->Keyboard Layout

yup, and the default shortcut is [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[K], you can change it through Control Center -> Regional & Accessibility -> Keyboard Shortcuts; though I don't think you can make it work with [Alt]+[Shift] because both those keys are modifiers... you can put it somewhere else, on [Win-key]+[K] for instance

odevans · 01-09-2006, 10:23 AM

Both the 2.01 OOo package (with the nice KDE integration) at linuxpackages.net and the openoffice.org download are about 104MB. Happy to hear everything is working for ya!

LazyP · 01-09-2006, 11:38 AM

Oops! Some help please. According to submount's documentation:

Quote:

Once the software is installed, and the kernel module is loaded, you can mount a submount filesystem.
To mount a drive under subfs, use the usual syntax, except put subfs in the filesystem type field, and add the option fs=<fstype> in
the options list. For example
mount -t subfs /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom -o fs=iso9660,ro
or for fstab /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom subfs fs=iso9660,ro

I've copied the function to find the filesystem type by reading the superblock from mount, so fs=auto will work. It can, however,
cause a noticeable pause, particularly on floppies, so there is another method for using multiple filesystems. If a keyword is used
in the fs= option, submountd will attempt to mount filesystems from a list. Currently there are two options: fs=floppyfss attempts
vfat and ext2, and fs=cdfss tries iso9660 and udf. Submountd will strip the options codepage, iocharset and umask from filesystems
that don't take them, so these can be included in list mounts, or auto-detected mounts.

Well not exactly what I wanted. (I want the submount deamon loaded upon a specific user's login). However, the changes in fstab are
permanent. I've thought of a workaround but I'm not sure. Please let me know if this solution is viable.
Actually I'm thinking of having two lines in the fstab refering to the same device. For example:

Code:

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom subfs fs=iso9660,ro
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro

Will it work?
But this might cause some trouble. What if I create separate mountpoints for subfs. eg /mnt/subcdrom or refer to devices via
softlinks eg /dev/cdrom instead /dev/hda. In this case the fstab will look like that:

Code:

#/dev/cdrom -> /dev/hda
/dev/cdrom /mnt/subcdrom subfs fs=iso9660,ro
/dev/hda /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro

If this works the subfs mounting daemon will function properly whenever loaded while it won't tease me (since I disapprove
automounting) and I'll be able to mount things as I did till now (like $mount /mnt/cdrom)

Woodsman · 01-10-2006, 01:00 AM

Quote:

Is there a way to make it happen?

Use the KDE tools in the Control Center (Regional and Accessibility).

Quote:

Let's face it. The whole mounting-unmounting process is bull* for a day to day user.

No argument from me!

Quote:

Luckily Konqui does the first half of the job but he cannot do the second (unmounting).

1. Use the secondary mouse button to click on the Desktop.
2. From the pop-up menu select Configure Desktop.
3. In the subsequent dialog box, select the Behavior icon.
4. Select the Device Icons tab.
5. Enable the Show device icons check box.
6. Disable all of the devices you couldn't give a pea about.
7. For your CD drive, however, enable both the Mounted and Unmounted options.
8. Select the Apply button.

An icon should appear on your desktop. Use the secondary mouse button to select the icon. There will be an unmount and an eject option. Not as smooth as Windows, but better than what you have right now. You also can mount and unmount from the Konqueror navigation bar.

1. Select the Services icon.
2. Select Storage Media.

You also can add a System menu option to the K-Menu that will provide the same Storage Media option.

1. Use the secondary mouse button to click on the Kicker panel.
2. Select Configure Panel.
3. Select the Menus tab.

Quote:

In other words, a .doc will be imported normally?

The general rule of thumb is the more complicated the formatting and layout of the Word document, the more that will not import correctly. I have tested this with some rather long and complicated documents and the result is that I keep using Word.