how to enable the Fn key in an inspiron 1520 in hardy heron?
 

Hey guys:

I'm really new in linux, and i got my almost-all functional Hardy Heron installed. What i want to do, it's to enable the Fn key, bcs i really use it a lot. I googled it a lot, but i don't find anything useful. I don't know if i must install any additional driver, or simply configure something. Either way, any help would be very appreciated.

Thanks in advance and greetings to you all.

My experience with laptops is that the Fn key is usually hardware only (e.g., no software), and doesn't send anything to the OS until you use it in combination with another key. Fn+F5 on my laptop, for example, toggles between the laptop LCD screen and an external monitor.

There may simply be no way to use the Fn key on its own in linux.

I am curious: you said you use the Fn key a lot. What do you usually use it for?

I usually use it in combination with alt key to use the numpad, bcs of the ascii characters in programming or chatting with ppl. It's a pain in the ass to look for an ascii table and copy-paste every character needed...

The Fn key itself is still hardware -- it just gets you the numpad. What you seem to be asking, then, is how to use the alt+### trick to type ASCII characters.

I'm not exactly sure how to do that, but if you're only using a few characters, and if you use KDE, you can add the Character Selector applet to the panel. Configuring it is easy: you just put whatever characters you want to be able to type in a textbox, and they each get placed in the clipboard with a single click (maybe speeds up the whole select, copy, paste routine a bit.)

I'm googling around a bit (you should as well :)) to see if I can find something better.

Thx for the info, i'm currently using gnome, but imma google some other way to enable numpad.

Greetings and thx for the help