Questions about Mac Book Pro Keyboard and shortcuts

Question

I have been researching a lot about this and I cannot seem to find any useful information about this topic, what so ever.

I have now been using Ubuntu in one week, and have gotten pretty confident with almost everything. Except keyboard layout and shortcuts. If you know a tutorial or a documents explaining keyboard shortcuts in Ubuntu or Linux in general, can you please list it? I use a Mac Book Pro with a Norwegian keyboard, and I have several questions about this:

• Is there a program for having a consist list of absolutely all keyboard shortcuts, and be able to change them?

• How do I use my Fn keys? (Fn button doesn't do the job for some reason)

• How can I use my Alt+letter-key-or-number-key or Alt+Shift+letter-key-or-number-key to get fancy characters. (Like I do on Mac OS X)

• How can I swap Cmd and Ctrl key system wide?

Also I really want to be oriented around this subject, since this is the only thing holding me back on Ubuntu, so if there exists some in-depth material on this, it would be great.

Also, if there exists some programs or material out there making it easier with Mac hardware I would enjoy that.

Answer 1

This answer is only part of the solution:

• How do I use my Fn keys? (Fn button doesn't do the job for some reason)

Try Fn+F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, etc.., see source. Also of interest might be this Ubuntu Documentation: AppleKeyboard article

• How can I use my Alt+letter-key-or-number-key or Alt+Shift+letter-key-or-number-key to get fancy characters. (Like I do on Mac OS X)

Try "System Setting ➜ Keyboard ➜ Layout Settings ➜ Options" and choose "Keys to choose 3rd level ➜ Right Win" and then use Ctrl+right ⌘+right ⌥ key, to imitate AltGr, which should allow what you asked for!

• How can I swap Cmd and Ctrl key system wide?

Under "System Setting ➜ Keyboard ➜ Layout Settings ➜ Options" choose "Alt/Win key behavior ➜ Control is mapped to Win keys (and the usual Ctrl keys)" as show in the screen shot below!

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For "3rd level keys characters", like @, [], |, ~ if the offered solution above does not work out (seems to be a general problem with Mac Book Keyboard Layouts) you can use GPaste daemon, which is a "Clipboard Manager", that is accessible through user-customized key-shortcut! - Create a list of characters, that are not accessible natively and use the following settings (if you like):

Simply use Ubuntu Software Center, to download gPaste (by seraching gpaste), if it suits your needs!