Technically it would be fairly easy to do this and toggle/enforce
Numlock on boot.

What makes it /hard/ is not the technical problem of /how/ to do it, but
the policy decision of /when/ to do it.  For instance, on this Thinkpad
laptop, Numlock is already a Fn+key special combination.  When this
combination is toggled the keys 7-9, u-p, j-l, m-. become the keypad and
because of the default enablement of Mousekeys
(System->Preferences->Keyboard->Mousekeys) these normal alphabetic keys
actually then start to control the mouse pointer movement on-screen.

Whilst changing the default here might make some people's lives easier,
it would cause a great deal of confusion for a user who has installed,
or is using Ubuntu on a Lenovo laptop for the first time.

To take this proposal forward the policy (what to do in each situation
like the above) needs to be clearly described.  If the complexity of all
those options is too great, then it might be preferable (and very valid)
to continue to respect whatever setting the hardware starts up with as
being the most reliable.  Quite often the BIOS accessible at boot has an
option regarding whether Num-lock should be enabled or not on start-up.

-- 
Num Lock is not activated by default at GDM
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/632341
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