numlock at boot

[Owen Taylor]

On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 19:36, Paul Morgan wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 15:28, Owen Taylor wrote:
> > For people who want this feature - I'm wondering if simply having
> > the desktop make the value persistant would be a good solution?
> > 
> >  - If you always want it off, it will stay off
> >  - If you always want it on, it will stay on
> >  - If you use both, then "the way it was when you logged off"
> >    is a pretty good guess for the default value.
> > 
> > That doesn't help people who want to use the numeric keypad
> > on the console, but I think that's a relatively small group.
> > And using the numeric keypad on the login screen seems exotic.
> 
> It is truly unusual for me to not include at least one numeral in my
> passwords, though usually I use more than one numeral.

I think using the num keypad for a segment of text with a few
embedded numbers is pretty unusual. Of course, there is room for 
all sorts of different keyboarding preferences :-)

> > In GNOME it would be relatively easy to make gnome-settings-daemon
> > track the current value of the numlock key, store it in gconf,
> > and then restore on restart.
> 
> How about:
> 
> in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard: numlock=on|off|bios|last
> (on at boot, off at boot, per bios, or "the way it was when you shut
> down")

As I said earlier, I'm not opposed to this ... I just don't think
it solves the problem for *most* users. They'll never find / bother
to find the setting. I'm a X/desktop guy, so I tend to concentrate
on solutions there; the console is a different world, and one
that is typically a lot harder to get right.

If somebody wanted to implement an /etc/sysconfig, that sounds
like a reasonable contribution to me.

Regards,
						Owen