Linux 5.11 To Properly Support The Keyboard Of Newer ASUS Gaming Laptops

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.11 To Properly Support The Keyboard Of Newer ASUS Gaming Laptops

The Linux 5.11 kernel will bring support for the ASUS "N-Key" keyboard that is used by nearly all of the current ASUS gaming laptops...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ASUS-N-Key-Keyboard-Linux-5.11

[skeevy420]

With all the woke, progressive changes that have happened as of late, I feel like adding support for a keyboard touting its N-Key is just horribly wrong. Does the N-Word really need a dedicated key?

Seriously though, I'm just F'n glad my Fn+keys worked with my cheapo. It'd suck to have a laptop or keyboard and only have maybe 2/3's functionality.

This support sadly but not surprisingly supplied by ASUS but rather the open-source community.

I think you're sleepier than I am. I assume you mean not supplied by ASUS.

[discordian]

Been along time since I dabbled with usb hid (~20 years?). But I remember a ridiculous amount of game controller input definitions that I never seen.

To make up for, apparently you still can't expose the common fn keys, and you still can't figure out the keyboard layout automatically.

[sireangelus]

is there a module that we can load up now? i just bought a zephyrus

[Jumbotron]

Just curious. For those with the other "A" gaming laptop, namely Acer, what is their Linux support like as opposed to ASUS?

[Sonadow]

Just my preference: I really don't like using the keyboard to manage hardware settings like volume, backlight and logout / shutdown.

These things should be done through the operating system's GUI and no where else.

[arQon]

With all the woke, progressive changes that have happened as of late, I feel like adding support for a keyboard touting its N-Key is just horribly wrong. Does the N-Word really need a dedicated key?

Probably does if you spend your time on a sufficiently far-right forum. :P

Maybe the next version will include a C-Key to replace the extraneous second CTRL key, with predefined macros built in. C-H for "It's just a hoax", C-E for "It'll vanish on its own by Easter", etc. The only problem is it'll need to use Emacs-style multikey commands for all the "C-M, C-xx" excuses for "I don't wear a mask because ${xx}".

[arQon]

Just my preference: I really don't like using the keyboard to manage hardware settings like volume, backlight and logout / shutdown.

These things should be done through the operating system's GUI and no where else.

I think you don't really understand the problem, or how any of this works, so:

The backlight needs to work regardless of whether there even IS a GUI or not, so your approach has already fallen at the first hurdle. That should be the keyboard's responsibility (and even the cheapest keyboards out there do tend to get this right), but on a laptop there's a weak argument for also having some sort of control from the PC side just to save power if you AFK, etc.

As for volume and such, the keyboard doesn't CHANGE the volume, as you seem to imagine. That would indeed be stupid. What it does is send "VOL_UP/DN/MUTE" etc, just like PG_UP/DN/etc.

All of those keycodes are well defined though, and have been for over 20 years now. NO keyboard, at all, should ever need a custom driver for this sort of garbage. Even the launchers have symbolic keycodes.

The problem here seems to be a mixture of ASUS screwing up and being lazy, AND a handful of things that genuinely DO need unconventional keycodes (fan control etc). So instead of following the utterly trivial standards for the pieces that ARE standard, and then only adding extensions for the pieces that are extensions, ASUS effed up the whole thing in typical (generally, not ASUS specifically) fashion and did all the standard stuff in a custom way as well, making someone else have to do the work to unfsck it back to normalcy.

[skeevy420]

Probably does if you spend your time on a sufficiently far-right forum. :P

Maybe the next version will include a C-Key to replace the extraneous second CTRL key, with predefined macros built in. C-H for "It's just a hoax", C-E for "It'll vanish on its own by Easter", etc. The only problem is it'll need to use Emacs-style multikey commands for all the "C-M, C-xx" excuses for "I don't wear a mask because ${xx}".

It'll use the right alt key for its Alt Right comments.

On your other comment, I'm just glad my budget mechanical didn't need any special BS for it's Fn key abilities to work. You're right that ASUS should have followed standards whenever possible -- it usually makes for less BS in a product.