Ubuntu 13.04 on Dell Latitude E6530 Alps touchpad

Out of the box, the 13.04 distro found the Alps touchpad but it doesn't work because Alps doesn't have Linux drivers ready.

To get it to work, I did:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

and then rebooted.  I needed to confirm they were installed so I used:

 modprobe -l |grep synaptics
kernel/drivers/input/mouse/synaptics_i2c.ko
kernel/drivers/input/mouse/synaptics_usb.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/ste_rmi4/synaptics_i2c_rmi4.ko

Both track point and mousepad work now.

Changing your editor in Octave

I like using GNU Octave for simple math calculations because it's free and easy to use like MATLAB.  But I have problems with the documentation that is neither copious not intuitive. Often times they just repeat the source code.  Well I could read the source code but where's the deeper meaning???


Here is how to change your default editor under Octave:

You can make a ".rc" resource file and place it in your home directory that specifies the exact editor and source location. For Linux;

 EDITOR("/usr/bin/gedit")

inside a file called ".octaverc"

This changes it permanently.

If you want to change it during the current session only type:

 edit editor '/usr/bin/gedit'

at the octave prompt.