Hey folks,
just switched back to Linux after a few years on Windows and am currently on a fresh Tumbleweed KDE install, and I’m having an issue with my keyboard’s multimedia keys not working. It looks like they’re not registering at all, tested with xev. XF86Explorer and the like show up, but none of the playback or volume related keys register.
Any ideas? I’ve tried googling, installed playerctl and pavucontrol, but so far no dice.
Are the multimedia keys in question part of the function keys or separate keys?
Run the following command to get the keyboard hardware in use…
sudo libinput list-devices
It’s fixed! I’ve tried rebooting several times yesterday to see if that would solve it, and it didn’t, but this morning the multimedia keys are working. I installed ‘libinput-tools’ last night just before I went to bed. I reckon installing that or one of its’ dependencies will have fixed the issue.
The multimedia keys are layered over the F keys, triggered with a Fn + F key combination, and the keyboard in question is a Roccat Ryos TKL Pro.
Anyway, problem solved. Thanks!
Good to read that the multimedia keys are now working as expected.
That won’t be the reason - the package was recommended just so that we could get more information about your keyboard hardware to begin with.
I wonder if you perhaps encountered the situation whereby a Windows boot “switches the keyboard in a special mode so the windows driver can handle the volume / multimedia keys directly without passing them as ordinary Keyevents.”
If powered off before booting Linux, or keyboard unplugged and re-plugged in a Linux session, perhaps that resulted in the correct (expected) behaviour again.
Wow, good find! That was most likely the issue, as I had the Roccat driver installed in Windows, and rebooted in order to install Tumbleweed.
Reboots didn’t fix the problem, but it was fixed the next day after a cold boot. I assume the keyboard reset itself after losing power following a full shutdown, which mere rebooting wouldn’t have done.
I hadn’t tried plugging the keyboard into a different USB port yesterday, as I had assumed it to be a software issue with my fresh install.
Maybe this thread will help someone else with the same issue in the future.