I'm using linux mint 18.3 KDE.

IBM wrote a set of hardware-specific utilities that allowed using the Fn keys of my old Thinkpad. Search for support for your specific machine: I suspect it's not a general thing.

By 'airplane mode' do you mean turning the wireless on & off? I do that with a short script that loads or unloads the drivers.

I would like to make it like this: "Airplane mode" "on" = wireless "off", bluetooth "off". When turning "airplane mode" "off" = wireless "on", bluetooth "off".
Isn't there a way to create button combination Fn+f3 with these functions? And maybe without being in root? If yes, how?

ps.

I dont get support for linux from the company I bought laptop, even though it looks like the slimbook, but with different specs, maybe same OEM.

Use the search term "linux mint custom keyboard shortcuts" and choose a guide.
For wireless I would look at the 'rfkill' command, although if you use NetworkManager, then you can simply right click on the nm-applet icon to turn wifi on and off.

to explain:

your task consists of 2 parts:

1. a script (*) that toggles airplane mode on/off, and is executable.
2. assign execution of that script top a hotkey of your choice. on my system, that's baked right into the windowmanager, but many desktop environments have a separate utility for that.

(*) i'd make that a shell script - e.g. bash - but it could be anything really.

I figured out this far:

airplane mode on = rfkill block all & nmcli radio all off
airplane mode off = nmcli radio all on

How do I make it as a script that you have mentioned?

I've tried to set up custom keyboard shortcut on KDE but it doesn't allow me to set the particular FN+F3 combination.




ps.

You see I have this FN+F3 key with "airplane logo" and the airplane mode that Mint KDE has in nm-applet just turns wifi on/off and leaves bluetooth on.

By creating a file with the commands you want to execute.
Associate that script with your Fn-F3 key combination. https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kde-w...eys/index.html

Where should I save this text editor file with commands? What is advised?

Guys who posted before me are quite right

rfkill needs to be turned on in the kernel. check gentoo wiki for example

certain notebooks need certain options turned on in the kernel => the reason why I recommend building the kernel yourself.

You should use xev to debug your keyboard. Does these special "ACPI key EVENTS KEYs" generate any events in xev?

And than there is the question on how you add that functionality in your desctop environment. e.g. i3wm uses /home/ USERNAME /.i3/config for example. There i have set my custom ACPI keys


Here when I hit the rfkill key and than check with dmesg. i replaced mac with snip

That depends on your desktop environment and distro.

Usually add it to the desktop environment configuration file. This has to be done for every user in question.

My fn key is not being recognized when I try to set up fn+f3, but it allows shift+f3 or ctrl+f3 (these two hotkeys are already taken/in use). Do you know why?

no, i don't.
but YOU can do some troubleshooting:
open a terminal, and enter 'xev'.
now, test the keys in question and see what happens.
maybe your Fn key doesn't work at all?
...

somewhere in the xev output are the keycodes required to assign hotkeys.

I did test with "xev" and "fn" key on it's own doesn't register, fn+space, which turns on/off blacklight to keyboard, doesn't register also. But volume up fn+f12 and volume down fn+f11 do register briefly and goes away when the buttons are released.

so why didn't you test fn+f3?

My bad, I forgot to mention also that the fn+f3 combo does not register in "xev".