Extra Keys

Ever wanted to use those extra keys (like volume, Internet etc.) on your keybord? Well, there are many ways to do this. The easy way (KDE) : Open the Control Center, go to Regional and Accessibility -> Keyboard Layout and choose your keyboard from the list. The hard way: Use this if your keyboard isn't listed there or you dont use KDE (there IS an easy way in GNOME too, but since I dont use it, I dont know it). Open up a terminal and run "xev" in it. Press the key you want to use and carefully note the keycode displayed on the terminal. Now, use "xmodmap" to set the key to a Keysym. For example, let's say you opened xev and pressed the "Volume +" key, and got this output:

KeymapNotify event, serial 31, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
keys:  2   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
       0   0   1   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0

KeyRelease event, serial 31, synthetic NO, window 0x2c00001,
root 0x44, subw 0x0, time 1901594635, (767,132), root:(771,602),
state 0x0, keycode 144 (keysym 0x1008ff4a, XF86LaunchA), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:

Note the keycode. Now, lets say you want to set the Keysym of key 144 to XF86AudioRaiseVolume (you can find more Keysyms in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB (debian) or /usr/share/X11/XKeysymDB (fedora)). The following command will set the "Volume +" key to raise the volume (on KDE, this launches kmix and then raises the volume, with a huge dialog (which lasts for about 0.5 seconds) telling you the current volume):

# xmodmap -e "keycode 144 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume"

If you dont want the huge dialog, then you can use the panel's volume setter to use the key (set it's keysym to something arbitary like XF86Launch0) to increase the volume.