3

The only one which works is Fn+F5 (toggle touchpad), presumably because xf86-input-synaptics is installed. Fn+F1 prints a literal plus/minus sign ("±").

Installing samsung-tools and rebooting did not help.

A forum post indicates that it might have worked out of the box before, but not since 2011. Could it be related to UEFI?

Follow-up question after changing to BIOS mode.

Community
  • 1
l0b0
  • 50,672
  • 41
  • 197
  • 360

1 Answers1

4

It is related to UEFI (if you choose to boot in that mode). These laptops were being bricked by a write to NVRAM (see this thread on the Arch boards for background); consequently, the samsung_laptop module is blocked from loading in UEFI mode, taking some of the Fn key functionality went with it, most notably:

  • F12 for rfkill
  • F11 for CPU management
  • F9 and F10 for the keyboard backlighting

All of the remaining Fn keys do show up with either xev or showkey and can be enabled either by your DE, or if you run a lightweight setup, some simple scripts.

jasonwryan
  • 71,734
  • 34
  • 193
  • 226
  • Ouch! I'm glad mine didn't get bricked yet. Will change to BIOS boot ASAP. Considering that it was much more complicated to set up and *still* has more problems than BIOS boot, I don't see why it's recommended. – l0b0 Nov 23 '13 at 08:43
  • FWIW: I have been UEFI booting mine since Dec, and apart from a few kernel panics before I blacklisted that module, I have had no issues... – jasonwryan Nov 23 '13 at 09:34
  • Thanks; will see if it remains as stable as it is otherwise. – l0b0 Nov 23 '13 at 22:15