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I am using Ubuntu 12.04, in a laptop that I carry around and use with different physical keyboards (as I don't feel comfortable with laptop keyboards)

For one of those keyboards (Dell SK-8135) the Super and Menu (?) keys are not recognized:

  • xev ignores keypresses completely for those 2 keys

  • showkey -s (ran as root, in the console) also ignores keypresses completely

I know that these keys in my keyboard work on other computers (I could not try them in another Linux based computer). I am 80% sure this particular keyboard used to work ok with an older version of Linux I used to have (it could have been a similar keyboard).

I tried also, with no avail, things of the like 

setxkbmap  -model dellsk8135
setxkbmap  -model dellsk8135 -print | xkbcomp - $DISPLAY

Any debugging clues appreciated; I am not sure how to go below "showkey" command.

juanleon
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    This Q&A explains key presses + keyboard: How do keyboard input and text output work? – slm Dec 03 '14 at 11:54
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    According to this Q&A, the main suspects would be the motherboard, CPU and kernel. None of witch I am able to debug. I suppose that I can narrow the suspect list by using a live distro with a different kernel (I am not sure if there are non Linux live distros out there), but I am not sure if that could be useful for solving the problem (since I cannot change kernel nor hardware) – juanleon Dec 03 '14 at 13:12
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    I would try that, it will give you additional info that may help in determining root cause. – slm Dec 03 '14 at 13:14
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    The Linux kernel is the most likely culprit: it ignores scan codes that it doesn't know about. You need to declare the scan codes. At a cursory glance this Arch Wiki page plus the links have the information you need. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Dec 03 '14 at 23:34
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    Some software can be handling these keys and preventing nested softwares (xev) identify it, try go to keyboard keys and look for some shortcut handling Super_L for example – deFreitas Nov 02 '18 at 13:37

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