Microsoft Remote Keyboard

[drpepper]

Hey guys,

I've hit a wall that prevents me from using gentoo at home.
Clearly this is unacceptable!

My problem is this.
I run a Windows Media Center Edition PC at home.
Its connected to the projector and all is well.
I bought a Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center from komplett.ie
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=317024

This was a great idea at the time, wireless and does everything it should.
However i tried it on my Gentoo machine in work and it wont work.
It uses the standard Media Center Remote's Receiver which i can pick up fine.
However i can't find anywhere that tells me how to use this keyboard with Gentoo.

I'd really appreciate any input you may have as 1. this keyboard is actually excellent 2. i don't want to have to buy a new keyboard just because of this. Clearly Gentoo is open source and somebody should have some work around against microsofts way of limiting this keyboard to Win MCE only.

Thanks in advance.

[quickshiftin]

drpepper

though linux is open source they do not have drivers sitting out there for every product on the shelf. often the issue that arises is a lack of specification for developers to implement code that 'makes hardware work'.
microsoft is fond of hiding specs because they want users running their os.

anyway i think what you are looking for lies in the xorg.conf file. here you specify the layout and driver for your keyboard.
you can do this in one of several ways:
manually edit xorg.conf;
run xorgconfig and run through a full configuration

or try a program that will analyze your hardware and make settings based on best guesses, here is a program that worked well on my laptop
Xorgautoconfig

know what the best part about open source is?

if there is no code out there to do what you want, you can always write it yourself

also, i think what you really need to find the driver for is this media center remote reciever. how does this connect to your pc, usb? there are a number of drivers you can compile into the kernel or enable as modules that may be needed to get that to work with linux. perhaps the problem has nothing to do with the keyboard at all, but the lack of support for the reciever.