A couple quick tips for some nagging problems, and fixes, I encountered on my old Dell Latitude D505 laptop after a fresh Xubuntu 8.04.1 install:
- You might experience a “pop!” sort of sound (NOT a system beep) every few seconds, or minutes. You might also have discovered that the screen slightly goes dark sometimes after each “poppping” noise. This is most likely due to a shoddy AC Power adapter hooked up to your laptop. It was the case for me — so much for power adapters from eBay. Anyway, the reason why Xubuntu is playing this “pop” sound (which you notice is simply a sound file, since you can kill it if you mute the sound) is because it considers the unplugging of your AC Power cord as an “error”, and plays this sound, which represents a generic system “error.” So to disable the sound, you need to disable the sound: click on Menu -> Settings -> Settings Manager -> Screensaver -> Power Management, and from here, go to the General Tab and uncheck the Use sound to notify in the event of an error checkbox. Tada! And, to disable the screen from flickering each time, go to the On Battery Power tab, and uncheck the Reduce backlight brightness option. Problem fixed! (Or of course, just get a good AC Power adapter.) Credits.
- The touchpad “tap” or “tapping” feature to click on a button or item is too sensitive for me by Xubuntu’s default settings. Unfortunately, there is no way you can disable this setting, unless you manually edit the usual /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Just follow CJ56’s instructions as stated here on post #5. In case the forum is down, here is what he said: add the lines Option “MaxTapTime” “0″” and also Option “MaxTapMove” “0″ under your “InputDevice for your “SynapticsTouchpad” value. Now, your touchpad’s tapping functionality is gone. Of course, you can comment out those lines or delete them if you want tapping back.
