How can I re-enable the typing break in 11.10?

Question

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?

Update: Thought I'd write an update based on some stuff that has happened since this question (and the two answers) were written.

Workrave

has now been re-instated in oneiric-backports and for 12.04 (how to enable backports). It works fine, though if you want to put it in your systray then you need to allow it in there. The easy/lazy command line way to allow workrave into the notification area is to do something like:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']"

But read this question if you want a more detailed explanation about what you're doing here.

Gnome Typing Break aka DrWright

Meanwhile the Gnome typing break has been split out into an app called DrWright, and is now available for 11.10 in the DrWright ppa (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:drwright/stable). It is patched for unity and set default to disabled. After you install it, log out / log in. Then you can find it in gnome control centre.

A quick search of packages.ubuntu.com doesn't show DrWright in 12.04 (search done in December 2011).

RSIBreak

And as mentioned in the other answer, another option is RSIBreak. It is a KDE app but works fine in Unity.

Answer 1

Gnome 3 developers have dropped this from gnome-control-center with a recommendation that it be repackaged and available as a separate application.

At the time of writing - a launchpad wishlist item has been requested.

An alternative in gnome 2 for typing break was workrave. However, this has also been removed from the repositories for oneiric. It is still available from sourceforge - but you will need to compile it yourself.

Answer 2

RSIBreak is a good alternative for Workrave! You can easily get it via Ubuntu Software Center!

Answer 3

PPA

deb

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.

Answer 4

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.