Ubuntu

I'm trying out Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) on a PC with a Mac keyboard attached. I made a few hacks to make the keyboard work smoothly and in a (very roughly) Mac-like fashion. I figured I'd make a few notes here for my own future reference. (Note: I'm using a U.S. keyboard. If you are using a different kind of keyboard, your mileage may vary.)

Goals

1. Make the function keys (F1..F12) work as function keys without needing to hold down the Fn key.
2. Use Mac-like keyboard shortcuts for window navigation (Cmd-Tab, Cmd-`) and the terminal (Cmd-C for copy, Cmd-V for paste).
3. Avoid stepping on Unity's use of the Super key (i.e. the command key on Macs and the Windows key on PC keyboards).
4. Use the legacy Caps Lock key for something useful.

The plan

1. Change a driver parameter to enable use of the function keys without holding down the Fn key.
2. By default, the keyboard's left and right command keys are mapped to Super_L and Super_R. Map these instead to the seldom-used Hyper_L and Hyper_R keysyms. (If you try to use the Super keys for shortcuts, the Unity dock will appear every time you hold down the command key. It's really annoying.)
3. Map the Caps Lock key to Super_L so it can be used for certain Unity shortcuts.

Making function keys work

Create a file in /etc/modprobe.d which sets the fnmode parameter of the hid_apple driver to 2 = fkeysfirst: