I have one of those internet multimedia keyboards with extra buttons at the top, I was wondering if there was a way to get them to work in Linux. I read somewhere in this list there was some files that needed to be installed but I don't have that email anymore. Could anyone please help.
I'm something of an expert on this, having just bought a multimedia keyboard and figured it all out on my own.
What you want to do is this:
1. Run xev and press all your extra fancy keys, record the keycode for each key.
2. Read /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB and find keynames with names that are appropriate for the keys. It's all arbitrary, but you'll want accurate names to preserve your sanity. For example, use 'XF86LogOff' for the "Log Off" key, 'XF86Mail' for the "Mail" key, etc.
3. Create ~/.Xmodmap so that each line reads "keycode=keyname".
4. make sure that 'xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap' is in ~/.Xclients
5. Configure your windowmanager to have actions bound to your new keynames. This is the tricky part; with metacity (the gnome default) you'll need to use gconf-editor to really dig into metacity's keybindings.
