Back in February, Guido van Rossum posted on Twitter a picture of his desk with a large mouse pad.
What got my attention from this picture was the keyboard. Down in the comment section, I found the manufacturer and model of this keyboard.
I have always wanted to try mechanical keyboards but never knew exactly which one to get or try. Seeing that this is the preferred one from a respectable developer, I decided to go for this same model.
The very specific configuration I wanted was not available at the time I was ordering it, so I subscribed to get a notification via email when the same configuration became available again.
I ordered mine on June 3rd, the keyboard was shipped from Hong Kong to Miami and arrived in the next 5 days. The keyboard arrived in Nicaragua 25 days later.
The first thing I tried to do was to set up the keyboard with my T440p running Debian 11 Bullseye via Bluetooth. For this, I installed Blueman, which provides a MATE applet:
su -c 'apt-get install blueman'
With the switches on the keyboard set to Windows and Bluetooth, the Blueman applet running, and following the instructions in the booklet included in the box, I was able to pair my Keychron K8 via Bluetooth with my T440p running Debian.
I had to manually add my keyboard as a new device with the applet and then pair both devices.
Over Bluetooth and in Windows mode, the swap from multimedia keys to function keys worked, but in wired mode, this did not work.
I found some hints on how to fix this in the official Facebook support group for Linux users of Keychron, which led me to this very specific command that must be run on every startup so that the primary option for the F1 to F12 keys becomes function keys instead of multimedia keys.
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode
Later, I found this documentation that provides at least 3 different ways to ensure this command is executed on every startup:
Ubuntu Keyboard Configuration Help
From the 3 options listed there, I decided to go for the one that makes use of the sysfs.conf file. So, I installed sysfsutils:
su -c 'apt-get install sysfsutils'
And added this line at the end of the file /etc/sysfs.conf:
module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode = 0
I then restarted the computer, and while in cable and Windows mode, I pressed the key combination:
Fn + x + l
After doing this, the primary option for the F1 to F12 keys will be the function keys instead of the multimedia keys.
To modify the screen brightness, turn the keyboard backlight on and off, or mute and unmute the audio, you must press the Fn key plus the function key (Fn + F1 or Fn + F2). This will allow you to continue using your K8 on Linux with the switches in Windows/Android mode, in wired or Bluetooth mode, with the function keys as the primary option instead of the multimedia keys.