The Apple Aluminium Keyboard under Linux

Just a short note about configuring Linux for using Apple’s nice Aluminium Keyboard: Linux uses the kernel module hid_apple to support this USB device. However, there are two problems:

  1. by default, the fn-key is in state pressed and thus, pressing the F-keys results in the scancodes for the corresponding multimedia keys, and
  2. the keys [<,>] and [°,ˆ] are swapped.

Both problems can be solved by passing addidional parameters to module hid_apple: putting the fn-key into state released can be achieved with fnmode=2. The setting iso_layout=0 fixes the second problem. For KDE4, the correct keyboard model is Apple Aluminium Keyboard (ISO). You may try out this setting on-the-fly:
echo 2 > /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fn_mode
echo 0 > /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/iso_layout

In order to make the changes permanent edit /etc/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf and insert:
options hid_apple fnmode=2 iso_layout=0