Recently installed Ubuntu 14.04 (kxstudio) on a lenovo R500 Thinkpad. Some of the hotkeys appear to be ineffective. F2, F4, ctrl-w, ctrl-c etc. are all fine. The most inconvenient failures so far are the inability to change workspaces using alt+ctl+arrow keys and no 'super' key. Any ideas?

Hi, welcome to LQ!

They have the keys. Often, when Fn keys are factory set to other features they provide a Function Key indicated somewhere along the Ctl, Alt, Space row. If none found, F2 or F12 are used for switching purpose: viz, it is pressed first to get briefly into F1-F12 usage; in my case it is offered for about brief 5 seconds, so to make sure I just hold it then press other Fn key for the usual function. I met this when I lost way to get into shell via Ctl+Alt+Fn, I searched and found none, only to discover that a small "Fn" key was beside Ctl key (I thought that it was a Win key), so when I pressed it (short-press) then CTL+ALT+F3 it took me to the usual shell.

Hope this idea can help. Good luck.

m.m.

thanks for the welcome and the reply.
the fn key on my machine, as far as i can tell, is limited to making the screen brighter/dimmer and switching the keyboard light on and off.
press and hold f12 leads to a blank screen with a cursor flashin in the top left corner and no way back in.
i think it's especially confusing because kxstudio has a kde gui but is ubu14.04. none of the tutorials show menus that look anything like mine and i haven't used kde for years. i've one or two key queries as a result o this but reckon it's better to deal with 'em one at a time.
ta for being there.

Hie ben aur,

I have tried to view some lenovo R500 Thinkpad keypads in the web I notice that there is an "Fn" key below the left Shift beside the Ctl key, some colored in blue. To use the keys F1, F2, F3, ... back to usual conventions press that "Fn" key first at the bottom of the pad.

Hope it works.

m.m.

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If you run the command xev in a terminal, you can check what the Windows key is being recognised as. You may need to run the keyboard configuration tool to make sure that it is the Super key.

KDE's keyboard shortcuts configuration tool enables you to alter things like "switch workspace" or "move to new workspace", so you can check there that Ctrl-Alt-↑ and so on are set.

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The keyboard shortcut configuration tool! looked it up, brilliant! I could really use that. It's not available in my settings menu as it stands. I get k/b, mouse, touchpad & joystick only. 's a very useful direction though. Thanks.

[QUOTE=DavidMcCann;5610989]If you run the command xev in a terminal,
I tried this, too. It created a small window with a black box outlined within. The terminal, as far as i could tell, was showing detailed info of the precise location of the mouse expressed as axes. not sure this is what was expected?

[QUOTE=DavidMcCann;5610989]If you run the command xev in a terminal,
I tried this, too. It created a small window with a black box outlined within. The terminal, as far as i could tell, was showing detailed info of the precise location of the mouse expressed as axes. not sure this is what was expected?

Yes, xev does respond to the mouse. But when you press a key, you get two reports: "KeyPress event" and "KeyRelease event" like
Note the "Super-L" that confirms that the keycode 133 has been assigned to the left Super.

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That's another useful post thanks David. Everyday's a school day.
I concluded that the kxstudio/ubuntu was, in this case, impaired in several ways. I've installed a gnome desktop which appears to have sorted it all out and everything's hunky dory now.