° I have an old Dell E4310 Latitude portable I've installed Fedora 32 on. it works but I would like to run it with an external keyboard, monitor,and track ball. Those things mostly workexcept that it wants to run the external monitor at the display settings for the little 14" screen. In order to fix that problem I want to be able to operate a toggle display function that uses "Fn + F8" and there is no Fn key on the standard keyboard. Xev shows nothing for the Fn key on the portable. I thought I would just remap the external keyboard but I have no idea what to do to change that. I found a suggestion googling to use the key to the right of delete, that does not work.
Does anyone know how to produce "Fn" from a standard desktop keyboard?
-- "................... Bob Goodwin - Zuni, Virginia, USA FEDORA-32/64bit LINUX XFCE Fastmail POP3
On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 14:21:21 -0400 Bob Goodwin wrote:
Does anyone know how to produce "Fn" from a standard desktop keyboard?
Odds are good that is a special modifier key that only means something to the innards of the dell laptop.
You could try running xev on the dell and see if fn+f8 shows up at all as an event when you press it on the dell keyboard. I suspect it won't.
On Tue, Sep 01, 2020 at 02:21:21PM -0400, Bob Goodwin wrote:
° I have an old Dell E4310 Latitude portable I've installed Fedora 32 on. it works but I would like to run it with an external keyboard, monitor,and track ball. Those things mostly workexcept that it wants to run the external monitor at the display settings for the little 14" screen. In order to fix that problem I want to be able to operate a toggle display function that uses "Fn + F8" and there is no Fn key on the standard keyboard. Xev shows nothing for the Fn key on the portable. I thought I would just remap the external keyboard but I have no idea what to do to change that. I found a suggestion googling to use the key to the right of delete, that does not work.
Does anyone know how to produce "Fn" from a standard desktop keyboard?
No clue, but isn't there a "monitor preference" application, possibly called "display"? it is used when you have two or more displays to arrange them relative to eachother, to set each one's resolution, and define which one is the main display.
Not runninhg F32 here, but it may be available on a panel in the "add to panel" section, or it should also appear on the menus somewhere (unless you're running Gnome, where they believe in hiding everything useful).
Fred
On 2020-09-01 17:59, Fred Smith wrote:
Does anyone know how to produce "Fn" from a standard desktop keyboard?
No clue, but isn't there a "monitor preference" application, possibly called "display"? it is used when you have two or more displays to arrange them relative to eachother, to set each one's resolution, and define which one is the main display.
Not runninhg F32 here, but it may be available on a panel in the "add to panel" section, or it should also appear on the menus somewhere (unless you're running Gnome, where they believe in hiding everything useful).
Fred
Yes, I did as you describe and have the right settings. This is for Fedora 32 and XFCE, there is a Display in the settings menu that permits selection of, in this case, the HP 27" monitor.
I was hoping for a solution to the absent Fn key on desktop keyboards which I would like to have. However the integral keyboard make the necessary selection, just not as conveniently.
Thank you for responding,
On 9/1/20 11:21 AM, Bob Goodwin wrote:
° I have an old Dell E4310 Latitude portable I've installed Fedora 32 on. it works but I would like to run it with an external keyboard, monitor,and track ball. Those things mostly workexcept that it wants to run the external monitor at the display settings for the little 14" screen. In order to fix that problem I want to be able to operate a toggle display function that uses "Fn + F8" and there is no Fn key on the standard keyboard. Xev shows nothing for the Fn key on the portable. I thought I would just remap the external keyboard but I have no idea what to do to change that. I found a suggestion googling to use the key to the right of delete, that does not work.
Does anyone know how to produce "Fn" from a standard desktop keyboard?
The Fn key by itself does nothing. It just changes the code sent by the keyboard when the F8 (or whatever) key is pressed. The tricky bit is that sometimes it's not a key that gets sent, it might be an ACPI or WMI message (I think those are the correct acronyms). But there is also a standard key code for monitor switching which you could map to some other key on the external keyboard. I'm using Wayland, so xev doesn't work for me. However, using evtest, the kernel keycode is "KEY_SWITCHVIDEOMODE" and I think that translates to something like "XF86VidMode" in X.
On 2020-09-01 19:13, Samuel Sieb wrote:
Does anyone know how to produce "Fn" from a standard desktop keyboard?
The Fn key by itself does nothing. It just changes the code sent by the keyboard when the F8 (or whatever) key is pressed. The tricky bit is that sometimes it's not a key that gets sent, it might be an ACPI or WMI message (I think those are the correct acronyms). But there is also a standard key code for monitor switching which you could map to some other key on the external keyboard. I'm using Wayland, so xev doesn't work for me. However, using evtest, the kernel keycode is "KEY_SWITCHVIDEOMODE" and I think that translates to something like "XF86VidMode" in X.
° Well then the next thing I will do is see how the F8 key code changes when Fn is pressed. It did not occur to me, I just expected Fn to be another key code which it seems it is not. /If it will retain the present setting through a reboot I may never have to use it.
Thanks for the explanation, /
On 9/1/20 5:23 PM, Bob Goodwin wrote:
Well then the next thing I will do is see how the F8 key code changes when Fn is pressed. It did not occur to me, I just expected Fn to be another key code which it seems it is not. /If it will retain the present setting through a reboot I may never have to use it.
I don't know about the other DEs, but Gnome will remember the settings for each monitor. So I can use a projector, or the the TV, or a monitor and it will switch to the settings I used there last time when I plug it in.
On 2020-09-01 21:30, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 9/1/20 5:23 PM, Bob Goodwin wrote:
Well then the next thing I will do is see how the F8 key code changes when Fn is pressed. It did not occur to me, I just expected Fn to be another key code which it seems it is not. /If it will retain the present setting through a reboot I may never have to use it.I don't know about the other DEs, but Gnome will remember the settings for each monitor. So I can use a projector, or the the TV, or a monitor and it will switch to the settings I used there last time when I plug it in.
° It remembered the display setting. I have not looked at the key dodes yet. Viasat has been down since last night and that causes confusion here ...
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Bob Goodwin -
Fred Smith -
Samuel Sieb -
Tom Horsley