On Sat, Aug 05, 2017 at 05:15:22PM -0700, Tao Effect wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might go about changing the behavior of the keys mentioned in the subject?
>
> I'm so very used to the OS X keymap and it is, I think, unnecessarily painful having to switch between different keyboard layouts.
>
> I would love to remap keys as follows:
>
> Ctrl => fn
> Alt => Ctrl
> Win => Alt
> fn => Win
>
> Any help appreciated!
>
> Thanks so much,
> Greg
>
Hi Greg,
As others have said, the Fn key is usually set in BIOS - if your machine
supports it you may find that you are able to swap keys there. (On my
Thinkpad you can do this, and it's also an option on some HPs.)
For the other keys, the simplest method would be to use xmodmap.
First, dump the existing keycodes.
'xmodmap -pke > ~/.xmodmap'
Then edit the file, swapping the entries as appropriate.
You can test the new settings by:
'xmodmap ~/.xmodmap'
To avoid doing this manually, you can add this command to .xinitrc - in my
experience that doesn't work in Qubes, but you can achieve the desired
effect by adding the line to .bash_profile.
Because of the BIOS constraints on the Fn key, you may find that you
have to implement swap FN-Ctrl in BIOS, and then remap Ctrl to Win using
xmodmap.
A major issue that you'll encounter is that individual qubes no longer
seem to inherit from dom0. (i think they used to.) That means that
you'll need to make this change in each qube AND i don't know how those
qubes will cope with the BIOS key swap, but it's worth a try.
unman