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October 6, 2008

Numeric keypad just doesn't work under Ubuntu

Filed under: — brendan @ 11:52 GMT

I’ve had the odd problem where the numeric keypad keys on my keyboard just don’t cause anything to happen. I run xev and I can see the keypress happening, but nothing appears where I’m typing.

A great blog entry by Peng Barthelmess has the workaround until Gnome does the real fix:

Go into the Keyboard Preferences (System >Preferences > Keyboard) and go to the Mouse Keys tab. Simply uncheck the box for Allow to control the pointer using the keyboard. (I know the grammar sucks on that sentence. I need to find a bug for that as well.) That will let users of Ubuntu Hardy, and other distros that use GNOME 2.22, to regain the use of their numeric keypad.

Worked like a charm!

6 Comments »

  1. I’m glad the post was helpful to you. Except while the blog is my sister’s, that post was actually written by me. Nanc and I share the blog but she’s asked me to write posts about Ubuntu and other tech subjects. It’s not a big deal, just wanted to let you know.

    Comment by BostonPeng — October 6, 2008 @ 15:46 GMT

  2. Adjusted, thanks!

    Comment by brendan — October 6, 2008 @ 15:52 GMT

  3. This is still an open issue on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)
    And the solution still works.

    Thanks

    Comment by carl — September 19, 2009 @ 02:03 GMT

  4. thanks a lot….!!!!
    with ur post i was able to solve
    my problem because ive been trying to make work the numpad at my laptop COMPAQ Presario CQ60

    Comment by manuel alonso — September 25, 2009 @ 09:30 GMT

  5. :-)

    Comment by brendan — September 25, 2009 @ 12:05 GMT

  6. Thank you! This was really annoying me too. I have an Acer Aspire 9300.

    Comment by haux — December 24, 2009 @ 08:36 GMT

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