Chapter 2. Customizing Your Settings / 2.4. Personal | ||||
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 | 2.3. Look and Feel | 2.5. System |  | |
Chapter 2. Customizing Your Settings / 2.4. Personal | ||||
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| 2.3. Look and Feel | 2.5. System | | |
In the following sections, find examples of how to configure some personal aspects of your GNOME desktop, like keyboard accessibility, keyboard shortcuts, assistive technology support, and learn how to change your password or manage virtual keyrings.
GNOME provides keyboard settings designed to help users with motion impairments using the GNOME desktop. Some of the available settings include:
How long a key is pressed and held before being recognized as valid input
Whether the keyboard can be used as a mouse
Whether key combinations that use Alt, Ctrl, and Shift can be duplicated with “sticky keys”
To configure keyboard accessibility settings, click +++.
Before you can modify any settings, you need to activate at the top of the window.
On three tabs, you can then define various settings for keys:
Some keyboard shortcuts require that one key (a modifier key) is kept pressed constantly (this applies to Alt, Ctrl, and Shift) while the rest of the shortcut is typed. When sticky keys are used, the system regards those keys as staying pressed after being pressed once. To enable sticky keys, activate the appropriate check box. For an audible feedback generated each time a modifier key is pressed, activate . If is selected, the keys do not “stick” anymore when two keys are pressed simultaneously. The system then assumes that the keyboard shortcut has been completely entered.
Activate to make settings with sliders for and . This determines how long a key must be pressed for the automatic keyboard repeat function to be activated and at what speed the characters are then typed.
Test the effect of the settings in the field at the bottom of the dialog. Select parameters that reflect your normal typing habits.
To prevent accidental typing, switch to the tab and activate . Set a minimum time limit that a key must be pressed and held before it is recognized as valid input by the system. Also determine whether audible feedback should be provided for keypress events, accepted keypresses, and the rejection of a keypress.
To prevent double typing, activate on the tab and set a minimum time limit for accepting two subsequent keypress events of the same key as the input of two individual characters. If desired, activate audible feedback upon rejection of a keypress event.
If you activate , the system gives an audible feedback when a keycap modifier key is pressed.
To use the keyboard as mouse, switch to the tab and activate . The mouse pointer is controlled with the arrow keys of the number pad. Use the sliders to set the maximum speed of the mouse pointer, the acceleration time until the maximum speed is reached, and the latency between the pressing of a key and the cursor movement.
You can also choose to automatically disable the keyboard accessibility preferences after some time of inactivity. To do so, click the tab and activate and set an appropriate time limit (measured in seconds) with the slider. The system can additionally provide audible feedback when the keyboard accessibility functions are activated and deactivated.
Several assistive technologies are included for users with special needs:
Screen reader
Screen magnifier
On-screen keyboard
To configure assistive technology options, click +++. To activate the technologies, first select and then choose the technologies you want to enable every time you log in.
The gok package must be
installed in order to get on-screen keyboard support, and the gnopernicus and gnome-mag packages must be installed in order to get
screenreading and magnifying capabilities.
If these packages are not installed on your system (they are installed by default during installation), install them with the following procedure:
Start the YaST package manager from the command line or open YaST and select +.
For , select .
In the field, enter the name of the package you want to install and press Enter. The package is listed in the right frame.
Select it for installation. Once done, you can search for more packages and select them for installation in one go.
Click to start the installation of the packages.
For security reasons, it is a good idea to change your login password from time to time. To change your password:
Click +++.
Type your old (current) password.
Type your new password.
Confirm your new password by typing it again, then click .
GNOME Keyring Manager provides an interface for viewing secrets stored in keyrings on your computer. Secrets include such items as:
Passwords
Wireless credentials
Certificates
Credentials for logging in to another computer
Most users will not need to use GNOME Keyring Manager because secrets are automatically managed by the applications that create them. Whenever any GNOME application that uses GNOME Keyring needs to access passwords or credentials stored there, a check is made if the keyring is locked or not. If it is locked, you will be prompted for the master password to unlock the keyring.
To open Keyring Manager (independent of any application interaction) press Alt+F2 and enter gnome-keyring-manager.
To delete a secret:
In the list of keyrings on the left side of Keyring Manager, click .
Click the secret you want to delete in the list in the top right area of Keyring Manager.
Click .
The secret is removed from the list.
Single sign-on is a method of access control that enables users to authenticate once and thus gain access to the resources of multiple software systems. CASA (Common Authentication Service Adapter) lets you manage authentication credentials across several platforms like SUSE Linux Enterprise, Microsoft* Windows* and Macintosh* OS 10. You can access and store passwords of the programs and services installed on any of these platforms. CASA also interfaces with GNOME Keyring, KDE's KWallet, and the Firefox Password Manager, allowing you to manage all of these from one interface if desired.
Before you can use CASA to manage your passwords, CASA needs to be enabled in YaST. To do so, start YaST and click +. In the dialog, click and after the confirmation message, click to close YaST.
Procedure 2.5. Managing Passwords with Novell CASA
Click +++.
If the CASA services are not available yet, a message box lets you start the appropriate YaST module to enable CASA first.
If you start CASA for the first time, you are prompted for a master password to encrypt and secure your credentials. Enter your master password twice and click . The opens.
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![[Important]](admon/important.png) | Persistent Storage in CASA is Tied to Login Password |
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Verify that your login password has been recorded and an entry is shown on the tab. If the entry does not appear, log out from your desktop and log in again to have your password recorded with CASA. If your login password is not known to CASA, you cannot use single sign-on. | |
To configure CASA, select +.
In the dialog, select the stores that should be supported by CASA and click . A tab is added for each store you selected, so you can now access and manage the passwords stored there from .
To delete a password from one of the stores, select the entry, right-click and choose .
If you need to change the CASA master password, select +.
You can also edit existing passwords, import or export passwords, or link passwords with Novell CASA. For detailed information, click + to access the CASA online help. Find the complete CASA documentation at http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Downloads/casa.
A keyboard shortcut is a key or combination of keys that provides an alternative to standard ways of performing an action. You can customize the keyboard shortcuts for a number of actions.
To open the Keyboard Shortcuts tool, click +++.
To change the shortcut keys for an action, select the action and then press the keys you want to associate with the action. To disable the shortcut keys for an action, click the shortcut for the action, then press <—.
