Gateway M460 laptops, Ubuntu, Xfce and you

Want to get your M460 media keys working in Xfce on Ubuntu? Turns out it’s easier than any of the guides seem to suggest.

If you’ve played around, you’ll know the volume keys work already, but the Play/Stop/Previous/Next keys do now. The trick is to make an .Xmodmap file.

Fire up vim (my favorite editor) or mousepad and edit ~/.Xmodmap. Punch int he following values:

keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay
keycode 164 = XF86AudioStop
keycode 144 = XF86AudioPrev
keycode 153 = XF86AudioNext

Close and save the file.

Next, open up the Xfce Settings Manager, click on Keyboard, click on the Layouts tab, then uncheck “Use X configuration”, select “Generic 105-key (Intl) PC” from the dropdown. Close the dialog window, close out the Settings Manager, then CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE to restart your X server.

When the machine starts back up, go back to keyboard, and you can now map your media keys in the Shortcuts menu.

The Gentoo wiki has a lot of information about what commands to set for your favorite media player.