This is just a warning to all of you about the KDE control centre,
specifically the keyboard selection part.
I have been enjoying KDE 2.2 for a while, but decided the time had come
for some customisation. I have an English Wallstreet powerbook, and the
option key was not working. I saw that I could change the keyboard
mapping in the control centre. This was exciting and I duly selected the
English keyboard. This was a disaster -- none of the keys returned the
correct letter. Oh well. Imagine, however my chagrin when I switched
back to the default, only to find that.... the default was a US keymap and
again a PC keymap so all of the keys returned the wrong letters. The
problem is that their default is not the default of the distro. Ahh!
Fortunately I had lots of text on the screen at the time, and was able to
use the mouse to copy individual letters to do the following:
su -
password:********
echo 1 > /proc/sys/dev/mac_hid/keyboard_sends_linux_keycodes
which immediately fixed everything. This allows you to use PC keymaps.
Indeed now the option key works, although the arrow keys are defunct
[ctrl-{f,b,p,n} work though]
So this is rather a gotcha -- do not mess with the keymaps in the KDE
control centre!!
Note that to make the change permanent it must be added to
/etc/sysctl.conf
The part I am not sure about is whether this change would have affected
all users -- I did not feel like trying it out and being stuck entering a
ROT13-like password. Loggin in remotely and su-ing would probably have
worked too.
Q.
