I've just upgraded to beta 2 of Oneiric/11.10 and the typing break has gone.
I've gone into the system settings and looked in "Keyboard Layout" and "Keyboard" and can't find anything. Has it just been dropped?
Is there some hidden way to re-enable it?
Gnome 3 developers have dropped this from gnome-control-center with a recommendation that it be repackaged and available as a separate application. A launchpad wishlist item was requested.
An alternative in for typing break is workrave. It is now available as a backport:
sudo apt-get install workrave
You need to white-list this application to appear in the Unity indicator-applet. Read this question if you want a more detailed explanation about what to do.
An enterprising developer has resurrected DrWright for Precise. The package is available from a PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:drwright/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install drwright
Note, that for 12.10,13.10,14.04 ppa is not up to date, so you have to use precise repositories:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/drwright/stable/ubuntu precise main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/drwright/stable/ubuntu precise main
Find the applet in the Control-Center to launch:
image and source for the information
In a similar manner as for 11.10, workrave is available from the Precise Universe repository if you do not wish to use a PPA.
RSIBreak is a good alternative for Workrave! You can easily get it via Ubuntu Software Center!
It is a KDE application (so it will it install alot of the KDE packages) - however it works OK in Unity.
Patched for unity and set default to disabled. After you install it, log out / log in. You can find it in gnome control center.
You can convert the drwright rpm to a deb package:
sudo apt-get install alien
sudo alien -c drwright-3.2.2-1.fc17.i686.rpm
sudo dpkg -i drwright_3.2.2-2_i386.deb
Once you install it, typing breaks are configurable via the System Settings menu.
I have made Workrave kinda working again in Unity, via a floating xfce4-panel:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11886947#post11886947
It is a hack, but I use it now and it works.
you could try the simpler xwrits
sudo apt-get install xwrits
it's in the standard repositories and all
but you'll have to read its manual
man xwrits
and tell ubuntu to start it every time on 'startup applications'
The typing break is back in Ubuntu 14.04, as mate-typing-monitor (part of the MATE desktop).
It appears to be included in the mate-control-center package that gets installed as part of mate-desktop-environment-core (see MATE wiki for detailed instructions on adding MATE repository and installing MATE 1.8.1).
Note that just installing mate-desktop (from Ubuntu's official repository) is not enough, you need to add MATE repository according to the wiki instructions in order to see the package.
Since it is not in the repository any more, I started to program a new tool in bash with zenity called typebreak.
It is configurable inside the source and does the trick on most Linux systems.
simply download the file from the repository and eventually the file mouse-speed too if you like to slow down the mouse as penalty for not obeying the micro-break
