Evdev upgrade %$#*s! keymap
Originally published at Vitae Ordinatraliter. You can comment here or there.
One thing I love about running ~x86 gentoo is the way configuration requirements change before documentation catches up. This time it was my keyboard, deciding to recognise arrow keys, page up/down, delete etc. as completely unrelated combinations. If I *wanted* the up arrow to launch ksnapshot, I’d map it that way. As it is, I actually prefer the up arrow to cycle back through my bash history or potentially move the cursor up a line.
Anyway, the fix is simple. The keyboard no longer likes to use the old-fashioned ‘kbd’ driver. Change it and the keyboard model to ‘evdev’. The relevant section of xorg.conf now looks like
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "evdev"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "evdev"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection
You also need to change your window manager to recognise the keyboard as evdev managed - in the case of KDE - Control Centre -> Regional & Accessibility -> Keyboard Layout -> Keyboard Model = Evdev-managed keyboard.
How you edit your xorg.conf while the window manager won’t let you move the cursor up or down is left as an exercise for the reader :p