Linux Link “Operation Not Permitted”?

I ran into an interesting snag today: one of my favourite games (Widelands) is installed on my second hard drive but has a save game folder in my home folder.
I didn’t like this (my home folder’s big enough as it is) so I tried to create a folder in Widelands’ folder and then make a (sym)link to it from my home folder.

Operation not Permitted.

No explanation why (that needs to be changed), but a quick Google search found the problem:

My Widelands install (and therefore the temp directory I was going to use for the saved games) is on a FAT formatted drive.

FAT (in whatever incarnation you have – NTFS, FAT32, whatever) doesn’t do (sym)links.

So… short of making the partition the game was on a different format (and wiping it in the meantime)… I moved my Widelands install to my ext3 partition.

Linked and off we go! Easy, once you know the problem.

Disable Slow Keys in Ubuntu

For whatever reason (long story involving a keyboard not working right) I had assistive technologies installed on my machine – you know, the ones that help the physically / mentally challenged use a computer?

Well, one of them was hindering my ability to play one of my games. Dangerous territory there, don’t get in the way of my games. Anyway… the pain in my arse is called Slow Keys.
(Edited the above to make it clearer)

If I held down the shift key for more than 8 seconds, it would ask me if I would like to enable Slow Keys.

Unfortunately, this dialog box makes anything you type not work / appear until it’s dealt with.

Annoying? Oh yes, and even more so as it tended to pop up UNDER the main window, so half the time I thought I was lagging / having technical issues.

The solution? To go into the settings for the assistive technologies:
System > Preferences > Keyboard > /Accessability/ > [ ] Accessability Features can be Toggled with Keyboard Shortcuts

I tried Googling it, nothing came close, so here it is.

Update – As Kevin pointed out in the comments, they’ve moved it in an update:
“Kevin Says:

In Ubuntu 11.10 the procedure has changed to:
System Settings> > Universal Access > Typing > Toggle Slow Keys”

Thanks Kevin!

And hello linuxquestion.org users ^_^

Personal – Bought XP and a DVR

Yeah, so I bought a copy of XP and a DVR for my computer about a week ago.

I, personally, don’t use XP 99% of the time (I favour Ubuntu, and it seems to like me much more as well). But with MS doing the stupid push towards Vista by pulling XP… I figured I’d pick up a copy. My recovery partition can’t last forever after all, and I’d actually like to start from scratch once in my life.

The DVR (DVD recorder aka DVD-RW burner) is something that’s been long overdue as my CD burner keeled over a few years ago and the LG DVR I bought about a year ago needs proprietary drivers.
I tried to get it to work by tinkering with stuff, even updating the firmware. *shakes head* No luck.

I’m hoping I’ll have more luck with the Pioneer one I got.