f18 keyboard and panel volume controls

[Mike Wright]

Hi all,

I put f18 onto a system three days ago and am having a lot of trouble 
making some basic things work.

The old way of setting up keyboard shortcuts is gone and the mapping 
between the keyboard and XF86, such as Volume Mute <=> XF86Mute are 
gone.  They now map to Pragha.  We'll have to chalk that one up to sheer 
brilliance on somebody's part.

The standard Volume Control on the top panel is also gone and I haven't 
been able to find a replacement for it either.  Having to open Audio 
Mixer and/or Pulseaudio Volume Control (whose title bar makes no mention 
of Pulseaudio) is absurd to the extreme.

Side note: there is now so much bloat that the only way to get VLC to 
play video and audio in sync is to run it --high-priority.  That's a 
first for me.

If anybody knows how to bring back keyboard control of volume and 
muting, and how to put a volume control back on the top panel I'd be 
most appreciative.

Thanks a million for any help,
Mike Wright

ps. If someone finds a bunch of marbles please be so kind as to return 
them to me.