Archive for the ‘Posts’ Category.
2012-01-12, 14:40
Since I’m now working a bit with embedded systems I thought I’d take a look at compiling for one of the ARM-based machines that QEMU supports. I settled for VersatilePB after finding this old-ish article. Rather optimistically I thought that maybe, just maybe things had change in a year and that the limitation of flash was removed. How wrong I was.
I did find an easier way to get it working, though with the limitation that Linux has to be started via tftpboot or some other network-based fashion. The patch looks like this:
--- u-boot.orig/src/u-boot-2011.12/include/configs/versatile.h
+++ u-boot/src/u-boot-2011.12/include/configs/versatile.h
@@ -31,6 +31,8 @@
#ifndef __CONFIG_H
#define __CONFIG_H
+#define CONFIG_ARCH_VERSATILE_QEMU
+
/*
* High Level Configuration Options
* (easy to change)
Then just go ahead and modify the default boot argument (CONFIG_BOOTARGS in the same file) to your hearts content to minimise the amount of manual work for booting.
2011-12-26, 09:12
Having lived outside of Sweden for about a decade I’ve grown accustomed to non-Swedish keyboard layouts, first the US (as it’s widely used in The Netherlands) and later on the UK layout. Moving back to Sweden had me swearing over the layout used here within only a few days. The placement of “{[]}” is especially painful. Clearly the Swedish layout wasn’t designed for developers! Rather than go on muscle memory I decided to first attempt a small change to the X key mappings.
I found a good description of per-user XKB configuration after a bit of searching. Then I modified it slightly to fit better in my Arch-based LXDE system.
The XKB config
I started with removing all the configuration I’d previously put into /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d — if I’m to use per-user configuration then there should be no system-wide settings at all. Then I put the output of setxkbmap -print into ~/.xkb/maps/$(hostname) as a starting point. The main goal is to move the characters that requires awkward single-hand combinations with AltGr to slightly more comfortable mappings. After a bit of experimentation I settled on the following (which I put in ~/.xkb/symbols/sedev)
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| partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "devkeys" {
key <AD01> { [ q, Q, backslash ] };
key <AD02> { [ w, W, asciitilde ] };
key <AC01> { [ a, A, braceleft ] };
key <AC02> { [ s, S, bracketleft ] };
key <AC03> { [ d, D, bracketright ] };
key <AC04> { [ f, F, braceright ] };
}; |
After setting it manually and verifying that the new mappings work I added it to my keymap, which ended up looking like this
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| xkb_keymap {
xkb_keycodes { include "evdev+aliases(qwerty)" };
xkb_types { include "complete" };
xkb_compat { include "complete" };
xkb_symbols { include "pc+se(nodeadkeys)+inet(evdev)+capslock(swapescape)+compose(paus)+sedev(devkeys)" };
xkb_geometry { include "pc(pc104)" };
}; |
Tying it together
Now all the remains is to load the new configuration on login. Based on madduck’s example I put the following into ~/.xprofile
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| # load XKB, if there is one
XKBDIR=${HOME}/.xkb
XKBMAPFILE=${XKBDIR}/keymap/$(hostname)
if [[ -f ${XKBMAPFILE} ]]; then
xkbcomp -I${XKBDIR} ${XKBMAPFILE} ${DISPLAY}
fi |
Now I just have to get used to using the new mappings.
2011-12-08, 10:48
A few days ago I create the page on LXDE and Xmonad on the Xmonad area of the Haskell Wiki. It’s very short, mainly due to it being very simple to set it up. My config is a bit bare-bones at the moment though and I’m sure others have more to contribute.
And yes! This means I’ve left the Gnome camp. Quite possibly for good.
