On my aluminum Apple Keyboard I prefer to have the F1 – F12 keys operate as the F1 – F12 keys by default, and access the brightness, expose, and other extras in combination with the Fn key. The is the opposite of the way they function in OSX. In OS X, you very rarely ever need to use the F1-F12 key unless you are using some professional software that uses them for shortcuts, so it is not that big of a deal. In Linux, however, I use these keys a lot to switch to virtual consoles and access gnome shortcuts. Previous to Intrepid, it was recommended to install pommed to enable the functions of many of these special keys. pommed’s config file had the option to swap the way the Fn key works, requiring you to use Fn in order to change the brightness, etc. Now, in Intrepid (8.10) most of the functionality of pommed has been implemented into hal and pommed simply creates conflicts. So how do we swap the function of the Fn key?

First edit /etc/modprobe.d/options
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/options

and make sure it has the line
options hid pb_fnmode=2

Then save and exit. Lastly, we need to update ramfs:
sudo update-initramfs -u -v -k `uname -r`

Then just reboot!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 8:38 PM and is filed under Apple, Computers, Keyboard, Linux, Ubuntu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.