I switched to Linux a during the year of the Linux desktop ™ and it’s been great but I have one small issue maybe someone knows how to fix.
I have tried 4 different distros so far (currently using bazzite and kachy on two different machines) and they all do this: every time the computer restarts, numlock turns off by default. I use keyboards with a numpad and the numpads do nothing it seems unless I hit numlock first. This is compared to every windows or apple machine used previously where numlock is pressed once after buying the computer then never needs to be again.
Is this the most minor inconvenience ever? Quite possibly. But I still find myself trying to enter numbers often and being frustrated I don’t notice right away. Probably doesn’t help I have a bunch of them in my unlock password after every restart.
Tl:dr; how to get numlock to activate on startup
Isn’t this a bios setting? I always did it that way, even on windows machines.
Try reading this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Activating_numlock_on_bootup
Look at the relevant section depending on your desktop environment
Best documentation out there generally, no matter the distro.
How do I find out what desktop environment?
A simple way, you can take a look
echo "$XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP"in the terminal.
Let’s do it faster, to check what is running inside the seat.
Here is a one-liner, just run it in your terminal:
desktop="${XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP:-${XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP:-}}"; session_type="${XDG_SESSION_TYPE:-}"; info="" session=""; if command -v loginctl >/dev/null 2>&1; then session="${XDG_SESSION_ID:-self}"; info=$(loginctl show-session "$session" -p Desktop -p Type 2>/dev/null) || info=""; if [[ -z "$desktop" ]]; then desktop=$(sed -n 's/^Desktop=//p' <<< "$info"); fi; if [[ -z "$session_type" ]]; then session_type=$(sed -n 's/^Type=//p' <<< "$info"); fi; fi; printf 'DE=%s\n' "${desktop:-unknown}"; printf 'TYPE=%s\n' "${session_type:-unknown}"It will show something like
DE=KDE TYPE=wayland
Most DEs have their own specific way to do this, so the exact solution will vary.
That said, if you’re looking for a general solution, there’s good odds your computer has a BIOS setting that can be used to set the initial numlock state, and that will work no matter what DE you use. If that’s an option for you, that would be my first choice.
+1 for the BIOS setting. Very common.
The trick is to get a keyboard that doesn’t have a numpad, and then you don’t need to worry about it anymore.
Settings> keyboard> num lock status
https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/numlock-at-start/4666/2
This is what I could find for Bazzite, lmk if it works.
Saving this for later
