30 April 2010

Ask Dr Aybabtu: How to make a Gnome behave civilly

Dear Dr Aybabtu,

I installed Fedora 12 and I can't get the mouse to behave properly. WTF?

Frustrated in Ft Collins,

Foo

Dear Foo,

Allow Dr Aybabtu a Clintonian moment without blue dress collateral damage: I feel your pain. Dr Aybabtu will not editorialize about the reasoning behind Fedora 12's removal of access to the One True Way of dealing with WIMP interfaces, namely that the focus follows the mouse. And no, focus does *not* mean changing the stack order, raising, or anything other than focus. Fortunately, you can put it back. From the mighty command line, issue:
yum install control-center-extra
You may need to sudo that, or do it as root. Then, navigate the Gnome menu thingie at the top of your desktop (or wherever the hell you've put it):
System->Preferences->Windows
Check the box labeled:
Select windows when the mouse moves over them
Under *no* circumstances check the box labeled
Raise selected windows after an interval
Surely madness and damnation lie down that path.

Whatever you do, do not seek advice about this on slashdot or other places on the interwebs, because you'll get answers like "use blackbox" or "I have Steve Jobs' sweat on my iDork and I will never ever wash it!", which may be interesting enough, but not the answer to the question.

HTH,

Dr Aybabtu

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