After spending a few hours yesterday figuring out how to use ssh tunneling, (possibly the topic of a separate post), I turned to things more mundane today.
I decided to see if there were any drivers for my logitech keyboard. I was having trouble using it with a belkin kvm (couldn’t option-select) and thought that new drivers, if available, couldn’t hurt.
I should have known better. While I like the logitech hardware(cordless itouch keyboard), their software has not always impressed me. This was to be reinforced, strongly, after I installed their newest drivers today.
Today’s experience literally had me wondering if I had gone crazy (shh).
Having gone some hours between when the driver installed and I allowed it to reboot the system, and having done a number of other tasks in the interim, I didn’t make the connection at first as to why my system was misbehaving so severely.
It seems that the vendor decided it was in my best interest to switch the “windows” and “alt” keys, with the result that where I had been “win-tab” switching all day, all of a sudden I had to “alt-tab” to navigate between apps.
Well, I suppose they were trying to make it easier for folks making the switch (like me). BUT, they didn’t tell me; they didn’t give me a choice to revert to prior behaviour and they ignored the fact that I was already used to the keys being where they were. (Turns out there is an indirect way to switch the keys; it still shouldn’t have happened without warning, and it should have been an accessible option in the keyboard’s control panel.)
It’s a very unsettling feeling (enhanced by the lack of sleep from the night before) when all of a sudden keystrokes you’ve been using all day cease working. Who would expect a driver to silently remap a keyboard? Bad driver! Oh, and the kvm? Still doesn’t work.