Dave Heinemann

Stop Unity from Interfering with Wine

After setting up Ubuntu 11.04, Wine and Warcraft III on my new ThinkPad, I ran across a couple of problems with Unity. First of all, the Unity launcher's auto-hide feature prevented me from scrolling in-game with the mouse (or, at least, from scrolling left). Secondly, Unity's use of the F10 key as a shortcut prevented the in-game menu (which also uses F10) from working. After a bit of Googling and playing around, I found solutions to both problems.

Fixing the left side of the screen

This problem is caused by the Unity launcher's auto-hide feature, which is toggled by scrolling the mouse to the left-side of the screen. However, this problem still occurs even if auto-hide is disabled in the CompizConfig Settings Manager. To fix it, Reveal Mode, the option which determines which part of the screen toggles auto-hide, needs to be disabled.

Note that disabling the Reveal Mode will mean you can't toggle the Unity launcher by moving the mouse to the left side of the screen. It should still be possible to toggle it by moving the mouse to the top-left corner, but you might find it easier to just disable auto-hide completely.

  1. Install the CompizConfig Settings Manager
    sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
  2. Open CompizConfig Settings Manager
    ccsm
  3. Under the 'Desktop' section, open 'Ubuntu Unity Plugin'
  4. Click on the 'Reveal Mode' button and a dialog box will appear; click the green bar on the left to prevent it from toggling auto-hide and press OK. 'Reveal Mode' should now say 'None'.
  5. You're done. Boot up a full-screen game like Warcraft III and try scrolling with the left side of the screen to confirm.

Fixing F10

Unity, by default, uses F10 as a shortcut to the File menu of whatever application currently has focus. It can easily be disabled in the CompizConfig Settings Manager.

  1. Follow steps 1-3 from above
  2. Click on the 'Key to open first panel menu' button, which should currently say 'F10'
  3. Untick the 'Enabled' checkbox and press OK
  4. You're done. Try pressing F10 to confirm.

#Linux #Ubuntu