Problem with Fn key in an aluminium wired Apple keyboard

[Sodki]

Hello,

I've recently bought an USB aluminium wired Apple keyboard to replace my (not so) old USB Apple keyboard and give my wrists a welcome rest.

Unfortunately, the Fn key doesn't seem to work. I've used xev in the past to configure my iBook laptop keyboard and my previous USB keyboard, but this new keyboard doesn't seem to produce different keycodes while pressing the Fn key.

I'm using vanilla-sources-2.6.24-rc7 and enabling CONFIG_USB_HIDINPUT_POWERBOOK doesn't seem to work.

These patches make me think that the support is already there, but I'm not really sure. I don't know why they aren't on 2.6.24-r7 if they have been commited on October:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/jikos/hid.git;a=commitdiff;h=82bc1bf6e6e76a1adb6095303d08ec55e1e0362f
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/jikos/hid.git;a=commitdiff;h=18947e227b295bc65ffa38401e151f08231828a0

Any pointers for me? Thank you.

[Atha]

Wow, this is an old topic! (And still unanswered!)

I'd say, shortly after you asked it should have been fixed. I found bug #219981 which points to a GIT kernel fix for the Fn key qirck.

For the Apple Alu USB keyboard in gerenal, I found a very good blog that makes the ISO version work very will with Linux: http://damienciabrini.blogspot.com/2009/05/make-your-apple-aluminium-keyboard.html
This made it work for me right from the beginning, and I got my keyboard about End of 2009, when I was still working with a Power Mac G5.

Now I'm running an ARCH="amd64" Phenom II X6 PC, but I still use this great keyboard.

Recently, the hack from the mentioned blog doesn't work anymore, because HAL was dropped in favour of udev. I don't have a solution yet. But everyone who owns one of these Apple Alu USB keyboards is invited to help make it work again!

If you are curious, please be there: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-857617.html

Cheers, A.