2013-08-17 13.15.10

Steve and Imo during a Code Kata

I‘ve bought a new keyboard to use it with my laptop when I travel and also for coding dojos. It’s small, cordless and with US layout which is what I use for coding. Very handy. It’s a Targus AKB33US.

But it hasn’t been easy to configure on my Ubuntu (I use lxde, known as lubuntu).

First the bluetooth… I needed to try it on Windows and also the help of my friends to get to know how to configure the bluetooth keyboard. I am using “Blueman” desktop app to configure it on Linux. And also a bluetooth-usb adapter. First you search for devices, and once the keyboard is found you select “Pair” from the right mouse button menu. Then it asks for a pin. Choose whatever you want (1234 for example) and click OK, and right after that introduce 1234 in the bluetooth keyboard.  Unfortunately Blueman doesn’t tell you this but the Window’s app did. Then also select “Trust” from the context menu. Then it should work.

The bad thing about Targus keyboard is that Delete and BackSpace keys are swapped and that is frustrating. This is the way to fix it on my machine.

# reset key map:
setxkbmap us   
# swap keys                                         
xmodmap -e "keysym Delete = BackSpace"
xmodmap -e "keycode 22 = Delete"

Thanks to Steve and Imo for the help with the keyboard in our last code kata together.