[ltp] Remapping Fn-Ctrl keys on Ubuntu Gutsy

[John Jason Jordan]

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:02:30 +0100

> On Mon, 29 Oct 2007, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > I have a T61 that is barely a week old. I want to remap the Fn and Ctrl keys in Ubuntu Gutsy amd64. I would bet this has already been discussed to death on this list, but I just now found the list and subscribed to it. I looked at the archives, but there seems to be no search function, so it would take forever to read through them. Can someone point me to the instructions? TIA

Florian Reitmeir <florian@reitmeir.org> dijo:
> use google ..
> site:http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pipermail/linux-thinkpad/ <your search term>

Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> dijo
    http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.ibm.thinkpad
Should be fully searchable.  Also, try http://thinkwiki.org/

Thanks for the suggestions, but I still haven't found out how to swap
the Fn and Ctrl keys. 

First, Florian's suggestion to use Google doesn't work for me. All I
get is a 404, no such file. Perhaps I didn't understand how to use
Google to search this list's archives. I did see that I can download
the whole thing (157 MB) as an .mbox file, which I suppose I could
search with Gedit or something. I'll do it if the answer is in the
archive somewhere.

Searching gmane.comp.hardware.ibm.thinkpad did not turn up anything.
The thinkwiki.org site had some interesting things, although nothing
specific about swapping the Fn and Ctrl keys. It did mention ibm-acpi
and tpb. I couldn't find ibm-acpi in Synaptic (even though I have all
the extra repositories enabled), although tpd was listed. However, tpd
doesn't seem to be what I need. Its description says:

program to use the IBM ThinkPad(tm) special keys
This program enables the IBM Thinkpad(tm) special keys. It is possible
to bind a program to the ThinkPad button. It has a on-screen display
(OSD) to show volume, mute and brightness of the LCD.

I also Googled before I posted the question last night and discovered
that evidently the Fn button is set in the BIOS. I also found numerous
instructions for remapping the Capslock to be a Ctrl key, although that
is not what I want, because I need my Capslock key. And this morning I
poked around in Gutsy and noted there was a setting under System >
Preferences > Keyboard > Layout Options where I can change the Ctrl key
position to:

	Default
	Make Capslock another Ctrl
	Swap Ctrl and Capslock
	Ctrl key at left of "A"
	Ctrl key at bottom left
	Right Ctrl key works as Right Alt

I set it to "Ctrl key at bottom left," but it didn't change anything. I
suspect that's because the Fn key is controlled by the BIOS, so you
can't map it with software. That means that, even if I can ibm-acpi and
get it installed, it probably can't change the properties of the Fn
key, and ditto for any other keymapping utility.

Someone please tell me that it can be done!