Category Archives: linux

How to work around inoperable Fn key

How to disable touch pad with broken Fn key.

The laptop that I primarily use has a touch pad. While I researched the processor, screen, etc prior to purchase, I ignored this part of the computer and have regretted it ever since. Probably due to poor posture or the way my hands are put together, I have a tendency to inadvertently contact the touch pad while typing with wildly unpredictable results. The screen focus or cursor may go anywhere causing chaos and frustration. The touch pads with a separate buttons never caused me such frustration but the one on my computer is very difficult to use.

I discovered that Fn-F7 would disable this touch pad, restoring predictability to my computer operations. Additionally, a usb mouse restored my sanity and allowed me to enjob my laptop despite the touch pad. All of this changed about a week ago when, for some unknown reason, the Fn key stopped functioning. Now I was unable to disable the touch pad and my laptop was frustrating again. How could I turn it off if I couldn’t fix the Fn key?

Fortunately, in linux there is a solution. I’m currently running Linux Mint 17.2. Here’s how I fixed the problem:

First, in a terminal screen type

 xinput list

which resulted, in my case, in the following output:

⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech USB Optical Mouse id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
 ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ HD WebCam id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Acer WMI hotkeys id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]

The key to see here is that the id of the Synaptics TouchPad in my case is 12.  Knowing this, we can turn this device off without having to use the Fn key after all using the following instruction:

 

xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" 0

If you’d like to turn the touch pad back on, type the following

xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled"  1

You can also make a desktop launcher by right clicking on the desktop and selecting “Create Launcher” from the menu that pops up.

Missing Mint 17.1 menu and how I got it back

I’ve been using a laptop with linux mint16 for about a year and a half. While it has worked great, I wanted to update to the latest fully supported version of linux mint. I followed these instructions and every thing seemed to go well. I was happy as a clam for several days, but suddenly, my system had no menus. I can’t think of a reason that the menu went away; I don’t remember anything unusual happening nor do I remember adding software after the upgrade to 17.1.

trans

I was able to right-click on the screen and get to a terminal window. I was able to open all of the files that I could think of the name of and all seemed to work normally. However, nothing seemed to bring the menu back. I did attempt the following command:
sudo mintmenu --reset
but didn’t have any success. I was able to use
sudo synaptic
to open the package manager, and I uinstalled and reinstalled the mintmenu package, but I didn’t notice any difference. My wife suggested that the problem was the panel after she looked at another computer on which we have mint installed.
When I right-clicked on where the panel normally is (in my case, the bottom of the screen) produced no panel references in the corresponding menu. I still had the package manager open, though, and I uninstalled and reinstalled the panel manager for MATE, named ‘mate-panel’ and ‘mate-panel-common’, rebooted the computer and voilà, I had the panel back. Next I right clicked on the panel and added ‘Main Menu’ back. I now had a menu, but it wasn’t the one with the favorites that I really liked. A little experimentation revealed that I needed to add the one titled ‘mintMenu’. After adding this I was back close to the way that I wanted my system. I now had the default menu do the the reset that I had attempted as one of the first steps to solving this, but the menu is easy to customize.

One additional note-right clicking on the panel area at the bottom of the screen will allow you to move the items after selecting ‘move’.  You can’t seem to simply click and drag to move them around.

If you have this problem I hope this helps you figure it out.