Linux Multimedia Hacks

Enable Your Multimedia Keyboard

LinEAK turbo charges the whole concept of customizing how your Internet/ multimedia keyboard works.

It’s hard to find a keyboard these days that doesn’t have special buttons to control your web browser, music player, or launch favorite applications. These keyboards include Windows software to activate these keys, but that obviously doesn’t help a Linux user. Instead, this hack will show you how to use the Linux equivalent, LinEAK. LinEAK is a combination of packages, including the main daemon service and several plug-ins. It’s a bit quirky and doesn’t always launch successfully (at least in this author’s experience), but it has support for many multimedia keyboards, so it’s your best chance of getting the keyboard to work with Linux.

As of this writing, you can get Debian packages for some of the programs that make up LinEAK at http://lineak.sourceforge.net/, and you can get the source code for all the packages from the same site and compile the programs and plug-ins yourself. I compiled my own and it was a cinch. The RPM packages at this site are out-of-date but might be current by the time you read this. Until then, you can find a variety of RPM packages for Lin-EAK designed for Mandrake and other distributions at http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3?stat=3&search=lineakd&srodzaj=3. And you can also search http://www.rpmfind.net. Make sure you have XOSD and XOSD development libraries installed if you want to enjoy the on-screen display feature.

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