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I've just upgraded to beta 2 of Oneiric/11.10 and the typing break has gone.

I've gone into the system settings and looked in "Keyboard Layout" and "Keyboard" and can't find anything. Has it just been dropped?

Is there some hidden way to re-enable it?

fossfreedom
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Hamish Downer
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7 Answers7

16

11.10

Gnome 3 developers have dropped this from gnome-control-center with a recommendation that it be repackaged and available as a separate application. A launchpad wishlist item was requested.

An alternative in for typing break is workrave. It is now available as a backport:

sudo apt-get install workrave

You need to white-list this application to appear in the Unity indicator-applet. Read this question if you want a more detailed explanation about what to do.

12.04

An enterprising developer has resurrected DrWright for Precise. The package is available from a PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:drwright/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install drwright

12.10,13.10,14.04

Note, that for 12.10,13.10,14.04 ppa is not up to date, so you have to use precise repositories:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/drwright/stable/ubuntu precise main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/drwright/stable/ubuntu precise main

Find the applet in the Control-Center to launch:

enter image description here

image and source for the information

In a similar manner as for 11.10, workrave is available from the Precise Universe repository if you do not wish to use a PPA.

Community
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fossfreedom
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5

RSIBreak is a good alternative for Workrave! You can easily get it via Ubuntu Software Center!

It is a KDE application (so it will it install alot of the KDE packages) - however it works OK in Unity.

fossfreedom
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ccooi
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  • RSIBreak is working but with some bugs on 14.04: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rsibreak #1358846 rsibreak doesnt start on startup #1358849 rsibreak doesnt save settings in actions tab – rubo77 Aug 25 '14 at 14:30
4

PPA

deb

Patched for unity and set default to disabled. After you install it, log out / log in. You can find it in gnome control center.

You can convert the drwright rpm to a deb package:

sudo apt-get install alien  
sudo alien -c drwright-3.2.2-1.fc17.i686.rpm  
sudo dpkg -i drwright_3.2.2-2_i386.deb

Once you install it, typing breaks are configurable via the System Settings menu.

okoloBasii
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1

I have made Workrave kinda working again in Unity, via a floating xfce4-panel:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11886947#post11886947

It is a hack, but I use it now and it works.

ayke
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1

you could try the simpler xwrits

sudo apt-get install xwrits

it's in the standard repositories and all

but you'll have to read its manual

man xwrits

and tell ubuntu to start it every time on 'startup applications'

Rafael Nonato
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0

The typing break is back in Ubuntu 14.04, as mate-typing-monitor (part of the MATE desktop).

It appears to be included in the mate-control-center package that gets installed as part of mate-desktop-environment-core (see MATE wiki for detailed instructions on adding MATE repository and installing MATE 1.8.1).

Note that just installing mate-desktop (from Ubuntu's official repository) is not enough, you need to add MATE repository according to the wiki instructions in order to see the package.

Tuetschek
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    How do you install it then? – rubo77 Aug 25 '14 at 14:57
  • Well, our company Ubuntu images come with MATE pre-installed, so I haven't done this myself, but I guess you just need to install MATE. It should be a part of the mate-control-center package, so make sure it is installed. It will then appear as /usr/bin/mate-typing-monitor. – Tuetschek Aug 26 '14 at 15:57
  • I installed sudo apt-get install mate-desktop but the typing-monitor is not there yet – rubo77 Aug 26 '14 at 16:05
  • Try installing the mate-control-center package (maybe it is not in the default set of packages that get installed after you run this command). – Tuetschek Aug 27 '14 at 12:16
  • There is also no such package. Do you use ubuntu 14.04? can you find out the package on your system with this help? Or post your output of dpkg -l in pastebin.com? If you have it, you should edit your Answer to include the name, then it would get +1 ;) – rubo77 Aug 27 '14 at 15:07
  • I've just figured it out and edited the answer. The mate-desktop package is not enough, you need to add MATE repository (sudo apt-add-repository... in the instructions on the MATE wiki). Then install mate-desktop-environment-core and the typing monitor should be there. – Tuetschek Aug 28 '14 at 21:23
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    But that installs the whole desktop alternative MATE. Isn't there a way to use the typing break in Ubuntu-Desktop 14.04 with Unity? When I try this from the console in Uity, I get (mate-typing-monitor:29007): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_hash_table_insert_internal: assertion 'hash_table != NULL' failed – rubo77 Aug 28 '14 at 23:57
  • Yes, it installs the whole MATE, but you don't have to use it. Typing break works well for me under XFCE and I've just tested it in Unity as well -- there's no notification area icon, but otherwise it seems to work (the screen will lock after the interval set in mate-control-center under Keyboard).

    I'm not getting any errors -- I would suppose that the one you are getting is due to some bug or library version clash. I would try updating everything, but if that doesn't help, I don't know what to do :-(.

     – Tuetschek Sep 09 '14 at 21:31
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    Ahh - so it isn't in Ubuntu, but is in the Mate Desktop PPA. That implies various potential complications from packaging, and a rather different level of support than an LTA release, and a different approach to security patching etc. But good to know! – nealmcb Oct 28 '15 at 20:43
0

Since it is not in the repository any more, I started to program a new tool in bash with zenity called typebreak.

It is configurable inside the source and does the trick on most Linux systems.

simply download the file from the repository and eventually the file mouse-speed too if you like to slow down the mouse as penalty for not obeying the micro-break

rubo77
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