I have just finished setting up my new Dell Inspiron 14(40) laptop with openSUSE 11.2. It’s been a blast (very nice machine), and nearly all hardware worked right out of the box, including the multimedia/ function keys (on this model, the media keys share the F# row, and by default, the media keys take precedence (i.e, you have to hit Fn-F1 to enter “F1”). I changed this “feature” in the BIOS).
However, the last key in the F#/media line is the “Eject” key. It is it’s own key, and as far as I can tell is specific to this keyboard (i.e, it’s not a standard key like the rest). I’d like to bind this key to an “eject” script so it works under linux as it was intended, but the KDE khotkeys “configurator” does not recognize the key.
Is there a way to enable this key to be used in linux (KDE specifically)?
First take a look in the Systemsettings, Country and …, Keyboard settings, keyboardmodel. A generic keyboard may have been selected, like on my ASUS, but a matching one may be available and provide the extra key. If not, you would have to catch the keycode and configure that in kHotkeys, but I’m by no means into that.
I saw that option (choosing a custom keymap); I’m just a little nervous that messing with it might mess up my current configuration, which as I said before, has all the multimedia/function keys working perfectly. Then again, the media keys are really onle Fn-F# combinations, so it shouldn’t be to hard to set them up again.
The second option you mentioned was the one I had in mind. I went through it before trying to get the Windows kye to work, but without success.