I’m very new to Haiku, as a matter of fact, I’ve only installed it a few hours ago on my Lenovo ThinkPad x270 to use as my daily personal laptop. I quite support what you are doing, and I also like your AI policy veeeery much
I have a few questions as there are several things I thought should/would work. These could also be my very poor skills at configuring the system, so here I am. btw I am aware that Haiku is in beta so it’s of course no big deal if these are bugs or whatever.
First thing I noticed is that my trackpoint doesn’t work. It seems strange to me as I’ve seen in a YouTube video that on a newer Thinkpad than mine, the trackpoint was functioning properly. I’ve checked on the BIOS if the trackpoint was indeed activated (it was), and it was working fine on Linux before, so it’s odd. Is such a problem known around here ? ;
Contrary to Action Retro, the trackpad works somewhat, but I have this weird bug (I suppose this is a bug) with does not allow me to drag a window around when using the trackpad only, I have to use the click button to drag a window around. Is it a bug or a feature ? Also, when I left-click at the bottom-left corner of the trackpad, the mouse cursor sometimes teleports to the bottom-left corner of the screen. It doesn’t happen every time so I think this one is a bug. Maybe a known one ?
This is by far the most annoying of the lot, my control row of key don’t work (I don’t know how it’s called in english, but you know, the top row that makes function keys when used with the “fn” key). I don’t really know what’s going on since it seems the keys are recognised (I can create shortcuts with the function keys) but I just can’t control the brightness of my screen nor the volume level nor use the screenshot key. The keys don’t seem to be detected in the keyboard configuration menu so I suppose it is by design ? But it seems strange so I am probably missing something.
In the screen menu, I can select screen resolutions which are incompatible with my screen (for instance 1920×1200@70Hz while my screen is a 1366×768@60Hz). Am I misunderstanding something ?
For some reasons, the default keyboard shortcuts don’t always work. I have no problem with ctrl+cmd+del, but I also can’t get crtl+cmd+z (so maximising if I understood the User Guide correctly) to work… What am I doing wrong ?
Those are all my buggy questions. These are all problems I can live with for now. My all in all experience is pretty fun, though I have still a hard time navigating (the paradigm is vastly different from GNOME, where I come from). And your desktop icons are GORGEOUS. I love this design. Great job !
On a merrier note, I have a few question about customisation :
Is there a way to change the button colours ? I quite like the retro vibe but one modern-ish thing I would love to have is coloured buttons (like green to accept a change, red to revert, etc.) I haven’t seen such option but maybe I missed something ;
I haven’t been able to create desktop shortcuts to my favourite apps (I love your icons so I want them big). Where to do that ?
NEW QUESTION: Is there such thing as an app launcher/rofi/“that thing when you enter a key and just search for the software you wanna launch” in the repo ? If there are several, what’s your favourite ? I haven’t found it but I’m notoriously bad at searching packages soooo…
That’s all I have for now, but I’ll make sure to stick around. Haiku feels like tons of fun !
Since the operation of these keys requires device-specific drivers, you probably shouldn’t expect them to work; I’ve never even tried mine.
This one may be that the default keymap does odd things with whether to distinguish between the left and right versions of the modifier keys? I don’t remember the details, but I had some similar issues that were solved by changing my keymap.
Look in Preferences->Keymap
You can change all the colors. Go to Preferences->Appearance->Colors and uncheck the “Autonatically pick secondary colors” box.
This one is weird, because (if your ThinkPad is like mine) the physical buttons are technically part of the trackpoint, not the trackpad. So if your physical buttons are working (as you say you need them to do mouse dragging), then moving the pointer with the trackpoint should be working too.
Huh. Makes a lot of sense. Should have guessed that.
Subsidiary question: I can see in my shortcuts menu that the “#c00e2”, “#c00e9” and “#c00ea” keys are dedicated to volume handling. I haven’t been able to find what those mean. Is it a placeholder ? I can change the shortcut anyway but it was strange haha
Hmm. Cannot fix for now even after adjusting the keymap… Weird. Anyway I’ll look into it more !
I didn’t uncheck that… Ooooooh I like what I’m seeing
Oh. Weird indeed. I can assure you the trackpoint was working like 10 hours ago when I was still on Linux.
Find the app and right-click > Create link > Desktop or drag it to the desktop with the right mouse button and choose the link option, or with the left one and whatever key makes a link instead of a copy, or use ln in the Terminal. You can find the application just opening the Applications menu item that contains it.
I think QuickLaunch with a shortcut to invoke it is wonderful.
You can find a few more docks and launchers in the depot using those as search words.
They are the codes for the volume media keys. But of course they only work… when they work. I think it depends on how they are reported. They should work if they come from a USB or PS/2 keyboard but may not if they come from a controller that needs another driver.
No it’s not placeholder, that actual keycodes of the volume mute/unmute, volump up and volume down keys, respectively, on a 105 standardized international keyboard.
But laptops keyboards are not implementing necessarily these keys always that way, if ever.
You may try to setup you own shortcuts by creating a new shortcut and pressing the matching key of your laptop: if it’s another keycode but the current input_server device addons are able to see it, it will show up, and you will just have to map it to the setvolume command (-t argument is for toggle mute/unmute, -i to increase volume, -d decrease volume)
Same for print key: try it, the command to trigger a screenshot is unsurprisingly /bin/screenshot.
If no keycode showup, it means the current input_server device addons don’t see it, or filter it for some obscure reason.
These should be HID keycodes. In the PS/2 driver we translate the keycodes to these HID equivalents; we should probably do this in other drivers aswell if neccesary
Yeeeah, I succeded but due to my shitty trackpad navigation (see above) it’s pretty cursed right now. Gotta buy a mouse haha
This. QuickLaunch is wonderful. Thanks for your advice, this was exactly what I needed !
Yup, it’s what I did. I also rummaged through the commands to adjust screen luminosity with screenmode. Working flawlessly now !
By any chance, do you know which command lines maximize and minimize one window ? The ctrl+cmd (alt, in my case)+z doesn’t work for whatever reason so I think I’ll just create new shortcuts for that
The shortcuts for zoom and minimize use both modifier keys. i.e ctrl+alt+z to zoom and ctrl+alt+h to hide the application.
If you want to use different shortcuts you will have to do some scripting or install a third-party tool like WindowTailor and create your own shortcuts in the Shortcuts preferences app.
I am aware of the shortcut, but for some reason way above my knowledge the maximizing shortcut doesn’t work (I tried resetting the keymap, adjusting stuff, etc. but no luck), so I think I’ll try WindowTailor !
