Jansson: On the Graying of GNOME

Posted Dec 18, 2020 2:55 UTC (Fri) by motk (guest, #51120)
In reply to: Jansson: On the Graying of GNOME by sandsmark
Parent article: Jansson: On the Graying of GNOME

My current rage-out is the the gnome shell currently captures all my function keys and uses them as media keys, and there is literally no way to fix this except by fiddling around with keymaps and config files like some sort of caveman. Pressing F8 should get the results I need on the vsphere stuff I'm installing, not decide to darken my screen or whatever. Nuts.

Jansson: On the Graying of GNOME

Posted Dec 18, 2020 5:48 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> My current rage-out is the the gnome shell currently captures all my function keys and uses them as media keys, and there is literally no way to fix this except by fiddling around with keymaps and config files like some sort of caveman. Pressing F8 should get the results I need on the vsphere stuff I'm installing, not decide to darken my screen or whatever. Nuts.

Are you sure this isn't the actual keyboard? I've noticed that modern laptop keyboards tend to map the Function keys to "alternative" functions (eg media controls) by default, and you have to use a Fn key to get the "traditional" function mappings. (There's typically a "Fn Lock" that will toggle the unmodified default..)

This is the case for my newer laptop, plus a couple of the other keyboards I have floating around here, but my old laptop, and the keyboard I'm typing this on, operate as one would expect.

(In other words, if the keyboard sends the "Decrease Screen Brightness" keycode when you press the physical F8 key, there's no way for GNOME to know that's not what you actually wanted...)

Jansson: On the Graying of GNOME

Posted Dec 23, 2020 1:51 UTC (Wed) by motk (guest, #51120) [Link]

It's a keychron k1, but I've noticed similar things on a dell lattitude where it would ignore Fn-whatever completely and just insist it was using a media keyboard. I'll play some more.

Jansson: On the Graying of GNOME

Posted Dec 18, 2020 9:09 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

As far as I can tell this isn't the default behaviour of gnome (I'm running unmodified Fedora here, and all my F keys get passed to the application). As mentioned elsewhere many modern keyboards default to having the F keys perform media actions unless the Fn key is held with them, and the mechanisms to revert this vary depending on the keyboard in question.

Jansson: On the Graying of GNOME

Posted Dec 18, 2020 15:00 UTC (Fri) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

Yeah media keys are not something Gnome does. That's your keyboard.

My Dell has a control for that in the BIOS to set the startup default. You can also press Fn+Escape (I think) to switch the mode. There's a little lock icon on the key. Or press Fn+F8 (or whatever) to get either F8 or Keyboard Backlight, depending on the default Fn mode.