Enabling your compose key for Unity in Ubuntu 13.04

If you ever write in a language other than English that uses Roman letters, the compose key is a huge help to doing so. It's also useful for times when you need to write a name with an accent, for example, Miéville.

Unfortunately, the compose key doesn't seem to be active by default in Ubuntu 13.04 (at least, for me it wasn't). Fortunately, you can restore the functionality quite easily.

First, open up the system settings application, either by clicking the icon in the sidebar or typing "system settings" into the Unity search bar.

Then, select "Keyboard Layout"

In the "Keyboard Layout" window, click the "Options" button in the lower right of the window.

Find "Compose Key position" in the list, and click it to open it up. Select the desired key(s).

 

Now, you should be able to create accented characters easily:

Compose + ' + e => é

Compose + ' + o => ó

Compose + ` + e => è

Compose + ^ + o => ô

Compose + ~ + n => ñ

LightDM fails to start

Had a quite annoying experience with my new linux laptop yesterday, after a routine update, it failed to start into X. In brief, LightDM has to wait until the nvidia kernel module is loaded. Originally, the /etc/init/lightdm.conf file had a `sleep 2` command in it, before it attempted to run `exec lightdm`. The upgrade changed the file, removing the sleep line, so that when I rebooted, X would fail, saying that it couldn't load the nvidia driver.

The fix for now, hack though it is, is to add the `sleep 2` line before the `exec lightdm` line. Boot is slower, but at least it works.

This was on Ubuntu 11.10. There is a bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/lightdm/+bug/873495