Recently, a few of us had a discussion about translating the book to Malayalam. GNU/Linux is now available in a lot of schools - and a local language version would be a boon to many smart kids who are capable of learning things by themselves. I suggested that we have a go at writing an `orignal’ book - mostly because I was having this pet idea of writing a book for kids for a long time.

This is one small problem with human languages like English
- you can’t simply go ahead and invent words of your own, even
if you are the Queen of England!

But programming languages have no such restrictions.

Because I’m constantly doing things on both machines, I’m always switching between my regular keyboard for my desktop machine and my laptop’s keyboard, and likewise with the two mice. Synergy eliminates that switching.

For years the free and open source software people would say that the number one enemy, the devil on earth, the only factor blocking us from flooding the mass market with gnomes, mice and strange k-prefixed creatures is the company from Redmond. But is it still the case today?

Brilliant Brainstorms is a (usually) weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. This week: configuring mouse buttons and wheels; organizing the desktop with icon types; in dual boot systems choosing OS before rebooting rather than on booting; and integrating Disk Usage Analyzer into Nautilus.

When you have shelled out for a swanky mouse like the Logitech VX Nano, you want to make the most out of your investment, which means making its programmable buttons work. However, many Linux distributions recognize most mice as generic pointing devices, so none of the fancy extra buttons work right out of the box. The btnx utility can help you to turn your mouse into the versatile tool it is meant to be.

Have multiple keyboards and mice on your desk? With Synergy, you can seamlessly share one keyboard, mouse, and clipboard between multiple systems. Have a laptop to the right of your main display? Just move the cursor off the right edge of the screen and it will appear on the laptop.

In our article earlier this week looking at the status of X.Org 7.4, one of the features originally planned for integration in this X Server release was MPX, or Multi-Pointer X.

When you splashed out for a new swanky mouse like Logitech VX Nano, you sure want to make the most out of your investment, which means making its programmable buttons work. The problem is, however, that many Linux distributions recognize most mice as a generic pointing device, so none of the fancy extra buttons work right out of the box.