CentOS

I've got CentOS 8 running on an Apple machine (as in, I wiped OSX entirely and installed CentOS 8). I'm having trouble figuring out which keys on my MacBook keyboard correspond to what keys CentOS thinks I'm stroking.

"control" is obviously Ctrl, but it seems like sometimes "fn" is Alt and sometimes "command" is Alt. The keys along the top of the keyboard mostly work (volume, keyboard backlight brightness, CD/DVD controls, eject button). But the screen brightness isn't translating.

Another weird part is figuring out how to use F# keys — no combination of shift / fn / control / option / command seems to bring me F-key functionality.

So specifically I need to know:

• Screen brightness control
• How to get F-key functionality

I've googled all over the dang place and searched these forums and can't find anything. Does anyone know a resource where these translations are documented?

Or, almost as good, a CentOS utility that would read my keystrokes and tell me what key I'm pressing?

Perhaps Apple (the apparent source of your problem)? It sounds like they have different key codes from everyone else from your description.

Sorry, I should have clarified!

I'm not running a virtual machine.

I wiped OSX and installed CentOS 8 on my machine. It's a CentOS machine running on Apple hardware. Apple isn't going to help me out with this at all.

As mentioned, I expect you're dealing with Apple keyboard codes. Hopefully I am wrong but ...

No one at Apple is going to help me figure out how to use a different operating system on their hardware.

I figure enough people are running Linux on old Macs that surely someone has some insight into this?