A better configuration for the Apple keyboard
As a piece of hardware, the Apple keyboard is great – crisp and satisying to use. In terms of key layout – not so much. Many users coming from non-Mac systems find the following frustrating:
- The media keys defaults to on all the time. Most people, particularly developers, use the function keys (F2, F5 etc) more often.
- The Ctrl and Fn keys are swapped, meaning Ctrl (surely the most important special key) is no longer at the corner of the keyboard. I’m flumoxed by this design choice, also present on the Thinkpad – it’s pretty infuriating.
- Alt is no longer by the space bar. This is confusing for alt-tabbing between windows.
- The “super” (start or command) key is moved compared to PC keyboards
Fortunately, there is a simple way to configure the mappings directly in the kernel under Linux.