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Comment by postpawl | Hacker News Reader

> objectively incorrect choice of a Ctrl/Fn/Super/Alt layout instead of Fn/Ctrl/Super/Alt

That can be switched in bios.

I haven’t had any WiFi issues on Ubuntu that require turning it off and back on. The author seems to be using arch.

I am so riled against Fn/Ctrl (I use Ctrl way more than Fn and my pinkey finds the corner easily) that I honestly didn't know some hackers prefer it that way round

I have never encountered anyone in real life that prefers Fn/Ctrl on a Windows or Linux machine. I have helped at least a couple of poor souls that had acquired a laptop that does it Fn/Ctrl to flip it in BIOS to the obviously superior Ctrl/Fn.

(macOS, the situation is different because it’s ⌘ you’re mostly aiming for rather than Ctrl, and it’s further in which makes it easily thumbable. On other platforms, Super/Fn/Alt/Ctrl might be a decent order, but I think you’d still probably end up wanting Fn to be second in rather than edge. But really, all I actually want is for Fn to be a regular modifier, please, not handled in the firmware where it only works on a few keys and is just dead on the rest. Fn keys are really stupid in this way.)

I think I prefer Fn/Ctrl but just because I've basically only used thinkpads for the last decade or so, so I'm used to it

Same, so much that it is one of the reason I am holding off buying an M1 (that and the fact that I am still waiting for Asahi to get more polished and that 2013 laptop works just fine were it not for the plastic case that is breaking apart as they always do, which is incidentally the reason why I am eying those Macs, long digression sorry) but I guess Mac users would disagree. Some people like to map Ctrl to Caps Lock as it used to be where it stood on older keyboards. Vim users prefer to map to Esc, but some clever have hackers have it behave like Esc or Ctrl when combined with another key. In the end, as always there are better ways but better ways are not standard and you loose the priviledge on the standard. I have to use other people's machine and I swear the first thing I do is launching a command to remap Caps Lock to Esc else I can't work. Tough call. In the end one gets used to anything, and old habits die hard, change is not welcome. And... Oh ! A better layout than qwerty that looks way more rational, I must try this. I am already writing a blog post in my head lamenting on how that new layout although better does not work well with the rest of the ecosystem.

I mapped Capslock to another Ctrl and haven't paid attention in years.

But yes, Framework firmware FTW.

Because you don't need to move your pinky as far? There's no need to hunt for Ctrl anymore than you need to hunt for left shift. Takes like 10 minutes to get used to.

it's not about distance for me, it's about the corner of the keyboard being an obvious anchor point.

Of course on other people's laptops I get used to it... But I'd rather have it in the corner!

I actually press Ctrl with the pad under my pinky, as I keep my hands straight (somewhat diagonally across the keyboard). This way you can avoid the crook in your wrists.

Yes! Ctrl+Shift+B is probably my most used keystroke and it's not fluid at all with Lenovo's default Fn placement.

Are you talking about tmux? Remap to Ctrl+Space. Ctrl+B is one of the worst defaults I could imagine. I wonder if they did it just because it's one higher than Ctrl+A from screen (which was much easier to type).

If you're not talking about tmux - also consider remapping if possible.

I remapped tmux to control-\ (which didn't conflict with anything in emacs that I cared about). It kind of sucks to hit that in a non-tmux shell or one without my config file though ;).

Control-space is mark in emacs (even though I am using vscodium these days - I do fire up mg for quick things). It does make it a two handed chord (left control) but it's quite fluid for me.

Ctrl+Shift combos without Fn remap is even more impossible with some other locale keyboards, e.g. the nordic layout: https://laptops.fi/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/63Y0145-scaled...

You're doing it wrong. C+S+b is hit with the right Ctrl,Shift. Using the opposite-hand modifiers keeps your hands happy, and makes things fast.

I wish we could choose one layout and then keep to it.

I mean, I am all open to an EU law here and I'm an not even joking.

Update: calm down, I only meant the Fn and Ctrl positions :)

That's still bad, at this point there are equally as many ctrl-fn fanatics, as fn-ctrl.

Option to adjust them in bios is perfect solution

Why a BIOS option? I don’t see why laptop keyboards can’t just ship with programmable firmwares.

I think ZSA is showing with their Oryx GUI just how easy it can be for an end user.

The FW's embedded controller's firmware has been open-sourced, is on Github, and you can flash your customized version if you wish so:

https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController

The fn key is not a real key on the software level: https://askubuntu.com/a/827953

I'm assuming I'm not understanding you properly, but are you suggesting that flashing a custom firmware is an easier solution than changing an option in the BIOS?

Assuming there'd be a nice UI in userspace to adjust the keyboard firmware settings, that would be a lot more accessible to casual users than going into BIOS. (Although, casual users probably don't care that much about Fn-Ctrl vs Ctrl-Fn)

Great, so one day said UI stops working on up-to-date releases of your $FAVORITE_OS because of $DEPENDENCY_ISSUES or whatever, and then what?

I don't know if I want to switch back to qwerty, at this point. :D

There are only a handful of mainstream keyboard layouts. Mostly ISO and ANSI.

> There are only a handful of mainstream keyboard layouts. Mostly ISO and ANSI.

You've got to be joking? Not even all my Macs have the same keyboard, let alone looking at Windows laptops.

Add me to the group that wants control to be the bottom left and not FN (though I also remap caps lock to control as well)

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