Customizing the Thinkpad T430

It was time to update my laptop, so of course my first choice was the formidable Thinkpad series. I always prefer to buy refurbished corporate laptops because there is usually a huge mark down on prices and in this case, a new LCD screen and Motherboard.

My new Thinkpad T430 arrived and I tried the installed Windows 10 for all of a night, and I was not impressed. I really wanted to like it but I'm an old grump set in my ways, so off it went and installed the awesome Ubuntu Mate 16.04 LTS on it.

The laptop is FAST, probably because of the  solid stat drive, maybe the 8 gigabytes of ram or just due to the no-bullshit strategy of Mate Desktop which makes it the best desktop environment around (with Openbox as the window manager, of course)

Nothing is ever perfect and in this case it was the lack of the menu key (keycode 0x6c), usually situated right of the space-bar. I use this quite often, mostly within Chrome for context menus and in Caja file manager. The T430 has two Alt keys (left and right) and I never use Alt on the right so it is fine to be replaced.


Swap Alt-right with Menu key

This is fine for just the session you are logged in for, but to make the change permanent:

Create the file .Xmodmap and insert the following code, then save

add mod3 = Super_R
keycode 0x6c = Menu

Once you log-out or restart, you should have a working Menu key mapped to the Alt-right key

Caps lock on/off notification

Having  a simple program to indicate your caps status is very helpful, especially for hidden text-fields like passwords. My solution is to use a small program called indicator-keylock which sits in your notification area and uses the notifiy daemon to pop up a reminder if your caps lock is on or off. Once installed, it will start automatically, here's how to install it:

sudo apt-get install indicator-keylock

Albert, the best quick launch solution

Quick launchers fall into one of two categories, you either love or hate them. Albert falls into the former, it's a clean and smooth quick launcher that has loads of plugins if you need them, I prefer to keep it in it's default state except the theme. I use Numix-Rounded which ties in perfectly with my favourite desktop colour of #222222.

On my T430, I prefer the keyboard shortcut of Right-ctrl + Print-screen (for whatever reason, sits near the space-bar....wtf?). 

The two keys are next to each other so to me, this make perfect sense.

Albert requires a PPA, here's how to install it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

(press enter when prompted)

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install albert -y

Personal Keyboard Shortcuts

These keyboard shortcuts are just the way I like things, feel free to use them if it works for you.

Meta C     Google Chrome [insert dconf command to set]

Meta W    Emacs

Meta O     Geany

Meta P     Pluma

Meta S     Mate Search Tool

Mate Theme

I have gotten used to using the same theme, shortcuts and application on all my computers because it just makes sense. To set up the them, I firstly download the Mist theme from here

  

Change Thinkpad T61 page forward/back to page up/down in Linux

The Thinkpad T61 is a formidable machine that has earned it's place in history and for me is still my go-to laptop of choice despite its' 10+ year manufacture date.

There one flaw that I have found, that the Page Up/Page Down keys are in the most awkward of places, on the very top right of the keypad.

There are two keys in prime position that are not utilized at all on Linux, so here is a quick and dirty way to remap the Page Previous/Page Next to Page Up/Page Down.

This is an easy problem to fix through the use of xmodmap in your .bashrc file.

To remap the keys all you need to do is:

• Open your bashrc with vim/emacs/nano ~.bashrc

• Add these two lines to the bottom of the file

  xmodmap -e 'keycode 167=Next'
  xmodmap -e 'keycode 166=Prior'

• Either log out or source your bashrc with source ~.bashrc

Then you should have a new Page Up/Page Down in the correct placement that is the most productive spot for such keys.