Please follow the below instructions at your own risk as they will probably set your monitor on fire while making that unreachable spot on your back itch.

The following  steps were performed on Eeebuntu Standard and have not been tested with any other distrobution.  If you get this to work on another distrobution, please comment to let me know and I will update the post. Ok, here is the meat of it:

1. Backup the /usr/share/X11 directory. (i.e. tar -cjvf ~/usr_share_x11.tar.bz2 /usr/share/X11)
2. Using your favorite editor, open the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us and after the closing curly brace of the first xkb_symbols block (line 68 for me) add the following lines and save and close the file.
   

   //Bill Pratt – tired of the eeepc 1000’s poor layout
   partial alphanumeric_keys modifier_keys
   xkb_symbols “eee1000″ {

   include “us(basic)”
   name[Group1]= “USA”;

   key <RTSH> {[ Up ]};
   key <UP> {[ Shift_R ]};
   };

3. Edit the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst and add the following line on the line following the first line that looks like “! model” then save and close the file.
   

   eee1000      Eee PC 1000 that swaps right shift and up arrow

4. Edit the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst and add the following line on the line following the first line that looks like “! variant” then save and close the file.
   

   eee1000         us: Eee PC 1000 that swaps right shift and up arrow

5. Edit the two files /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.xml and /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml. Look for the <layoutList> section below and add the bolded lines as shown. TDo this for both files.
   

   <layoutList>
   <layout>
   <configItem>
   <name>us</name>
   <shortDescription>USA</shortDescription>
   <description>USA</description>
   <languageList><iso639Id>eng</iso639Id></languageList>
   </configItem>
   <variantList>
   <variant>
   <configItem>
   <name>eee1000</name>
   <description>Eee PC 1000 that swaps right shift and up arrow</description>
   </configItem>
   </variant>

6. Now, logout of your current X session and log back in. After logging in, choose System -> Preferences -> Keyboard and click the “Layout” tab.
   

   

7. Click the green “+” and choose “United States” and “USA Eee PC…” then click “Add”. Notice the swapped right shift and up arrow keys in the layout below.
   

   

8. Next, highlight the old keyboard layout (typically “USA”) and click the red minus sign to remove it.
9. Finally click “Apply Site-Wide” and then click “Close”. You should now be using the improved layout.

Well, thats it. Hopefully this helps return your sanity. Please report success or failures to me and I will fix anything necessary.

/usr/bin/keychain ~/.ssh/id_dsa
. ~/.keychain/`uname -n`-sh

Then add the following line to .bashrc as some terminals (gnome-terminal for one) do not log in each time and will not see the sourced environment variables above:

. ~/.keychain/`uname -n`-sh

You can add as many paths to private keys as you want. Now fire up a terminal, and you will be prompted for you passphrases as if you had run ssh-add. From now on, any terminal you start will have your keys loaded. It works well and I have not had any problems yet. See the man page or the link above if you want further information as there are options that I have not mentioned here that you may be interested in.

I hope this helps someone. As always, comments are welcome.

1. Download Java from Sun as a self extracting rpm.
2. Remove java icedtea if it’s installed
   • sudo yum -y remove java-*-icedtea java-*-icedtea-devel java-*-icedtea-plugin
3. Install Java and answer yes to the license agreement (this is for version 6 update 3, you will need to adjust the filename to match the version you downloaded)
   • sudo sh ./jre-6u3-linux-i586-rpm.bin
4. You will need the following packages to get the Firefox plug-in to work
   • sudo yum -y install compat-libstdc++-33 compat-libstdc++-296
5. Now symlink the plug-in (this is for Firefox 2.0.0.12 so you will need to adjust the path for your version of Firefox
   • cd /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.12/plugins && sudo ln -s /usr/java/latest/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
6. Setup alternatives to point to Sun’s Java
   • sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/latest/bin/java 2 /usr/sbin/alternatives –config java

   There are 2 programs which provide 'java'.
   Selection    Command
   -----------------------------------------------
   *+ 1        /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.5.0-gcj/bin/java
   2           /usr/java/latest/bin/java
   
   Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number: 2

7. Verify that the correct version of Java is being used
   • java -version

   java version "1.6.0_04"
   Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_04-b12)
   Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 10.0-b19, mixed mode)

That should do it. Please let me know if you have any questions or find any problems with this little how-to.