Thinkpads Forum

I would like to kill the forward/backward navigation keys that are positioned to the right and left of the up-arrow key on the ThinkPad keyboard. I use mouse gestures for that kind of thing, so all they represent to me is an off chance that I'll hit one while composing a post online, which results in losing the post...

I killed them in Windows via a ThinkVantage app, I think, but I'm not having any luck in Ubuntu. I messed with the keyboard mapping utility, but it doesn't seem to know the keys exist.

The placement of those keys is [censored] annoying.

Not speaking from a Linux perspective (yet), I know when I make the same mistake in Firefox and then jump forward, the entered text is still there. I'm not sure how long it's cached, but if I close the tab and restore it, it remains. As extra protection, I still have the Lazarus extension installed, so if the worst happens, I can use that to restore it.

I don't know if Firefox on Linux will do this, but Lazarus might be worth looking into if it works on a Linux Firefox install.

Figured it out. I remapped them with the CompizConfig Settings Manager. I didn't even have to know what their keypresses looked like to the OS, I just captured them during the customization process. (Though I did find out, via 'xev'. Turns out they are keys 166 and 167 and they appear as XF86Back and XF86Forward.)

I was able to map them to Maximize Window and Unmaximize Window (Restore Window) in General Options. I also mapped the SHIFTed versions to Show Desktop and Put to Next Output in General Options and Put, respectively, to get some heavier use out of them. Not too shabby.