KubuntuLaptopButtons

Revision 4 as of 2006-06-13 12:21:16

Clear message

Summary

Make Kubuntu support for laptop buttons as good as in Ubuntu.

Rationale

Many laptops and also desktops have extra feature buttons which handle power management, display controls and other features. These should work as well in Kubuntu as they do in Ubuntu.

Use cases

Masie has a laptop with suspend and brightness buttons, she wants to make sure these work.

Scope

Design

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

Ubuntu uses hotkey-setup package to properly map different laptop keys into defined set of Linux keycode. For more info see:

  • /usr/share/doc/hotkey-setup/NOTES

This ensures that every laptop will send the same keycode for the same key. Ubuntu/GNOME was patched that gnome-settings-daemon catches those events and starts appropriate action.

KMilo module of kded provides handling of laptop keys and on-screen display of action. KMilo has modules for asus, delli8k, generic, vaio, powerbook, thinkpad, we should make sure these all work.

  • The thinkpad one polls nvram and tells kmix to change, it should probably leave most of it to thinkpad-buttons and just offer an onscreen display, or if necessary a key event.
  • The generic one handles standard xkeysyms and works for laptops/keyboards with proper Xkb keyboard layout.

KMix should listen to the key events and have working default bindings.

Questions: how the heck to fix for all these types of laptops?

  • we should add new KMilo module: keycode (or ubuntu)
  • this module would catch linux keycodes (done by hotkey-setup) and transform them into appropriate actions (volume/brightness control, launch applications...)
  • we should package/enable only generic (for xkeysym) and new keycode modules of KMilo
    • we need to ensure that no (major?) functonality of dropped modules (asus, delli8k, vaio, powerbook, thinkpad) is not lost

  • Use the framework the laptop-testing team has in place LaptopTestingTeam and get people to test Kubuntu Edgy on their laptops. A possibility might be to supply from Canonical laptops to key testors like they do for Ubuntu. Build wiki pages like LaptopTestingTeam/DellLatitudeD810/Kubuntu but with more laptops

See notes from talking with mjg59 KubuntuLaptopNotes

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