[Lysdestic]

You should even have to configure the shortcuts in kmix - it bypasses that with the volume control, at least from the way I have it figured out.

I didn't need to install a KMix plugin either. This is on KDE 4 beta for me as well.

I basically figured out keytouch myself, so I could be doing something odd, but it worked for me.

Open up keytouch, find a laptop similar to yours. I found that just about all of the Dell Inspiron laptops worked for me, despite the different keycodes. Doing that should do the trick, or it did for me at least. Experiment, play around with it - or maybe someone else here has better solutions for using keytouch.