mactel-support team mailing list archive

[Dawning <james@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I've run Ubuntu on my Apple machines for several years now and I've
found the current approach (requiring the pressing of the fn key) to be
very intuitive. I do have a friend however who bought an Apple keyboard
for his Whitebox PC and he never thought to even try holding 'fn'. But
you can't win 'em all.

Perhaps there's enough quirks to Apple hardware to justify a little GUI
config app for selecting enablers for various little things such as
disabling the default functionality in this case.

I like it as it is, that's my vote anyway.

-- 
Apple fn key behavior isn't consistent with what's expected
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/201711
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mactel
Support, which is the registrant for Mactel Support.

Status in Mactel Support: New
Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
Status in “linux” package in Suse: Fix Released

Bug description:
Hi, this is a follow up to bug 162083.  With my newly functional FN key on my Aluminum BT keyboard, I realized that the default behavior on it doesn't make much sense with what users have come to expect on Linux systems.  The default behavior is that the "special keys", like f1-f2-f10-f11-etc all act "special" without pressing fn.  They then act normally when you hold FN.  This is the default behavior on Mac OSX, but on Linux the FN keys are more commonly used.  Eg, it's rather awkward to have to press ctrl-alt-fn-f1 to switch to a VT, or FN-F11 to set a terminal full screen.