Soon after I started using Openbox instead of GNOME, I missed the way GNOME handles laptop-specific keys (volume/brightness up/down, touchpad on/off, switching primary/secondary display). As well the keys usage, as battery low/full and AC connected/disconnected events are being followed by lovely graphical confirmations. That’s why I wrote the obhud Python script. It provides commands to use in key bindings and also in Tint2 battery-related commands, which execute required actions and display confirmations.
“Autoconfig” options allow to automate assigning keys in rc.xml and battery commands in Tint2 (default ~/.config/tint2/tint2rc file only). Today I tested them with my ArchLabs installation, and it seems everything went not any worse than on my Arch-powered machine.
You’ll find the project on GitHub. Do not forget to take a look at Wiki. The obhud package you’ll find in AUR.
0.2.2-1: Last night, on a fresh AL installation, I came across a crash caused by unexpected xrandr behaviour. Though I was unable to make it happen tonight, I added a workaround, which hopefully should prevent the script from crashing if it happens to someone else.
Hi @nwg, using obhud means a lot for me, thank you!
After obhud stopped working i found out that unfortunately it can’t do anything as long a folder ~/tmp exists, as it seem to need a file ~/tmp:
% obhud 11:46:51
/bin/sh: /home/entr0py/tmp: Is a folder.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “hud.py”, line 162, in
main()
File “hud.py”, line 55, in main
check_dimensions()
File “/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/obhud/commands.py”, line 253, in check_dimensions
values.screen_dimensions = measure_screen()
File “/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/obhud/commands.py”, line 238, in measure_screen
resolution_string = open(values.tmp, ‘r’).read()
IsADirectoryError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: ‘/home/entr0py/tmp’
On my Dell Latitude E6430 with ALPS/PS2 touchpad I use obhud and itś great!!
I have one problem though. I can not get synaptics to work properly. Disable touchpad while typing is one example and I see i in Arch-wiki that synaptics is not maintained anymore and here comes the real problem. When I uninstall synaptics I see that it is a dependency to obhud. Is that possible to change to libinput instead?
To disable the touchpad, first get its name with xinput list and then disable it with xinput disable name .
First, we would have to parse an output similar to this:
[piotr@asuspro ~]$ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ DaKai 2.4G RX Consumer Control id=13 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ DaKai 2.4G RX Mouse id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad id=18 [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)]
↳ Asus Wireless Radio Control id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ DaKai 2.4G RX id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ DaKai 2.4G RX System Control id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ USB Camera: USB Camera id=15 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Asus WMI hotkeys id=16 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=17 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ DaKai 2.4G RX Consumer Control id=19 [slave keyboard (3)]
Furthermore: the command xinput enable 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad' doesn’t seem to work for me.
If you’d like to get rid of synaptics, and still have obhud on your machine, you’d need a package built for your personal use, w/o synaptics in dependencies. You’d also have to edit ~/.config/obhud and redefine touchpad_on and touchpad_off variables.
Let me know if you need help at building the package.
Hi and sorry for the delay!
I have been very busy and one of the things I have been doing is researching touchpads. My son’s girlfriend sold her old computer to me for 30 bucks! HP ProBook 640 G1. 8GB ram, haswell, 256GB SSD. The reason she sold it was that it is not possible to upgrade to Windows 10 . (it’s always a good thing not to have that problem!)
To make touchpad work well for me (old mac-idiot) synaptics seems to be a must (even if it’s standstill with dev.) So do not work your eyes out for my account! The HUD is a great tool for linux-laptop-users! Thank you!!
Not bad! My daughter’s boyfriend bought a powerful gaming machine recently. I must ask if he’s got a good offer for me.
Very well. However, I’ll take a look at the code. It would be not bad to make a GTK+ version for sway / Wayland. [edit] No idea why I used to think it didn’t work with sway.
This “new” laptop (took it with me to work!) is great! The only limit is space. (256 GB SSD). It’s really quick according to my standards!
Booting in 5 sec.
My main drive is 240 GB SSD, and I still have 117 GB of free space. Another disk is 1 TB HDD, but I only use it for backups and testing partitions (ArchLabs, Void, Debian). I put into the place of the DVD drawer.