on Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 02:58:12AM -0800, Erik Steffl (steffl@bigfoot.com) wrote: > Dave Sherohman wrote: > > > > On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 12:28:53AM +0200, Ian Balchin wrote: > > > To the point, why does debian switch off the numlock in the first > > > place when it has been set on at bios level, and surely most people > > > want it on anyway? > > > > That's not Debian-specific. The Linux kernel ignores most BIOS > > settings and uses more direct methods to interact with the hardware. > > > > As for why numlock defaults to off when, as you've stated, most > > people seem to prefer it on, I would guess that either a) the > > hardware defaults to numlock off and the kernel doesn't touch it or > > b) Linus prefers it to be off and nobody's convinced him that other > > people don't share that preference. > > note that numlock is generally considered a modifier in X (and is set > up as modifier in debian) and can screw up your keyboard bindings > (mostly in WM but for some other apps asd well) Under X, some (broken) apps fail rather mysteriously with numlock on. Early editions of RealPlayer among them. Later versions have removed this dependency. They mysteriously fail for no reason at all. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
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