HowTo: Activate keyboard numlock on KDE under Gentoo

Having finished compiling KDE 3.5.9 as described here I proceeded fine tuning it which involves among other things enabling the keyboard numlock.

In this post I'll lay down some alternatives that will allow you to activate the keyboard numlock on the KDE desktop environment:

1. on a per user basis using KDE's autostart mechanism
2. through the KDM login manager
3. installing the kxkb package and graphically using the Kcontrol center
   

Alternative 1
You can activate the keyboard numlock on peer use basis like so:

• $ su
• # emerge --ask --tree --verbose numlockx
• # exit
• $ vim .kde3.5/Autostart/numlockx

#!/bin/sh
numlockx on

• $ chmod +x .kde3.5/Autostart/numlockx

Alternative 2
In alternative if you use KDM as your login manager you can set it on system wide:

• $ su
• # echo "/usr/bin/numlockx on" >> /usr/kde/3.5/share/config/kdm/Xsetup

Alternative 3
Yet another alternative is to install kde-base/kxkb if you've installed KDE using split ebuilds (like I did here):

• $ su
• # emerge --ask --tree --verbose kxkb
• browse to KDE's Control Center > Peripherals > Keyboard > NumLock > Turn on
  

As a side note the above procedures can easily be mirrored to any Unix like system.

Now go ahead and fully use your keyboard ;-)

Resources:
http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/TIP_Numlock
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Activating_Numlock_on_Bootup
http://linux-bsd-sharing.blogspot.com/2008/10/howto-install-and-setup-kde-35x-on.html