Monday, November 23, 2009

Restoring Windows-like behavior of shift and arrow keys for text selection in Ubuntu

I recently upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu Karmic (9.10) and as a result found that I lost use of my keyboard arrows in the "Windows" way, meaning that I could no longer, for example, use SHIFT+DOWN_ARROW to select consecutive lines of text in a document.

I remember vaguely that I dealt with that when I first installed Ubuntu (all the way back to Hardy), so I dug up my old notes and found the solution, which is very simple. I figured I'd note it here too for those of you who might encounter the same problem, especially as it can take a couple hours to find the right search terms to get you to a solution in a google search.

Basically, the problem is a conflict with Compiz Fusion settings. To restore this functionality, all you need to do is bring up the Compiz Fusion Settings Manager (under system, preferences) and uncheck the box saying "enhanced desktop zoom".

Presto!

It's little things like this that can drive someone back to Windows, which would be a shame. Anyway, I hope this helps someone.