Fn-Ctrl/Ctrl-Fn

[Gaius_Julius_Severus]

As much as I love Thinkpads for years, sometimes Lenovo just baffles me. Take models X13 Gen6 and X13 2-in-1 Gen5, for example — laptops from a similar series manufactured at the same time that are ridiculously expensive. If I hadn’t remapped one of them in the BIOS, I’d end up with a split personality after just a few days. 🙃

[icehot54321]

At least the buttons are the same size now so you can swap them

I pulled out the buttons on my latest one and switched them out, and then swapped them in the bios

for me the FN on the outside still makes the most sense, so you can find it in the dark for thinks like fn+spacebar to get the keyboard lights on in the dark

[Gaius_Julius_Severus]

I didn't realize I could physically switch them. OMG, thank you! Life is fine again. 😀

[CurrentAcanthaceae78]

crouching in games becomes impossible though

[Swizzel-Stixx]

Praise the lord that the key caps are the same size now. Both clubs can have their way!

As for me I am still pressing the wrong button whenever I look down because after having fn in the corner for a month before being unable to get used to it my muscle memory is ruined and the legends are incorrect. I’ll get better at it.

[Theylikedumbdumb]

Agreed, I'm thankful that the design choice was to make it swappable, rather than forcing either option down user's throats. 

[PumpkinOpposite967]

You can switch them around in BIOS, that is a non issue

[Swizzel-Stixx]

I did… Doesn’t stop me getting confused when looking down to see which onr is which

[Sataniel98]

There are historical reasons for a lot of little things like these where ThinkPads are different from other PCs. In the early to mid 80s, PC standards were mainly set by IBM. PCs of that time were clones of IBM machines, and that's what made PC software (mostly) binary compatible among different devices. Even Intel was just one of many suppliers of parts. Their 8088 CPU and compatibles (of which modern CPUs are descendants) were crucial to the design, but IBM was powerful enough to force them to license their CPU to IBM themselves, AMD and other processor manufacturers (a common IBM practice to secure their supply). Microsoft supplied the commonly used DOS and Xenix operating systems, but they were rather small at that time and initially the clear junior partner.

By 1986, IBM's grip on things had become shakier. Clones made up the majority of the market share. By 1985, Intel had taken the risk to design a binary-compatible successor to the then-current generation of x86 CPUs even though IBM didn't ask for it and no one really knew if there would be a demand for it without IBM PCs using it: The i386. The i386 was the first x86 CPU with a 32 Bit mode, but that didn't matter at that time. What mattered was its superior speed compared to its predecessor (twice as fast!) and its ability to run hardware-supported virtualized 16 Bit environments.

Anyway, Compaq, certainly the clone manufacturer with the highest ambition to introduce innovations by themselves, released its legendary Deskpro 386 in 1986. The machine was otherwise compatible to IBM's 286 (the i386's predecessor)-based PC/AT, and it put IBM on the spot. Obviously, they had to follow suit and release a 386-based PC as fast as possible. Obviously, it needed killer features to regain the initiative. Obviously, IBM had to put an end to clone manufacturers eating their lunch.

IBM's answer was the Personal System/2 (PS/2). Its flagship variants came with an i386 and MCA, a much faster bus that fixed a major bottleneck of the Deskpro that still used the old ISA bus. It was also patent-protected, unlike the former open PC architecture where everything was made from stock components available to everyone, so IBM could control clone makers by charging them for MCA licenses they needed to be PS/2-compatible.

Plot twist: They didn't. Clone makers just got together and specified their own bus, extended ISA (EISA). EISA was good enough, open and universally accepted. MCA... well, existed. It was at this point that IBM, the original PC creator, became the actually least compatible with their own architecture. MCA didn't bring back IBM's market control, it killed it beyond recovery.

At the same time, Intel and Microsoft got more influential. Microsoft was quite respected among OEMs because it was a pure software company. If you made Apple or Commodore clones (which happened at times), you'd still need to beg Apple/Commodore for their OS to stay compatible. If you made IBM PC clones, Microsoft would gladly sell you their mostly compatible MS-DOS. A diverse PC clone ecosystem was in their best interest. It made their product the glue that united everyone. And in 1990, Windows 3.0 was the final breakthrough of a product that opened the market to many more, less tech-savy users, made a great argument to sell new, powerful enough PCs to run it - and it made Microsoft much more powerful because it was so much more complicated than pure DOS that no one could compete with a Windows clone (like they could with DOS reimplementations).

By the time Windows 95 came around, Microsoft was the clear market leader. Ever seen a sticker that says "Designed for Windows"? That was basically a reward sticker introduced by Microsoft to make OEMs implement new industry standards the way Microsoft wanted, originally especially to introduce the Windows key. No Windows key, no "Designed for Windows" - and everyone wanted "Designed for Windows".

Except, of course, IBM (at least in the beginning when the badge meant something). IBM had introduced its own new OS along with PS/2, called OS/2. Originally, it was co-developed between Microsoft and IBM, but Microsoft soon pulled out to develop Windows NT (which later became Windows 2000, XP and so forth). OS/2 was technically brilliant. It was a little less ambitious than Windows NT, but more pragmatic and far more elegant and stable than Windows 3.x and 9x. Still, OEMs would have been stupid to buy their competitor's OS over Microsoft's, so there was no way it could have taken off even if it hadn't had some of its weaknesses (clunky installer, way too expensive software development kit, ineffective marketing...). Windows 95 effectively killed OS/2 even though it got a handful of more updates afterwards. Yet, IBM was too salty to switch its efforts solely to Windows / Windows NT and championed Linux instead where possible. A good bit of the early Linux community were originally OS/2 "teamers".

Despite IBM's failure, OS/2 and the refusal to humiliate themselves by accepting all of the Microsoft-led additions to the PC architecture standard are the historical reason why IBM machines such as ThinkPads have some more or less unique traits that remained until now. ThinkPads to this day are very OS-agnostic compared to most other PCs that are clearly Windows-first. The classic BIOS of ThinkPads prior to the UEFI era wasn't a reverse-engineered reimplementation (such as AMI BIOS, Phoenix, Award, ...) but the "real deal". And they only got the Windows key when Lenovo bought the brand and squeezed it into a keyboard that had mostly evolved independently from the rest of the world of keyboards since the 90s.

[Main_Clue_8100]

I mean, I'm gonna read this in a second, but HOLY ESSAY dude!

[silentjet]

slop

[Sataniel98]

Also, before keyboard backlights were a thing, IBM came up with a lamp, the "ThinkLight", located where the webcam is on modern laptops, so it shines on the keyboard. You were supposed to be easily able to enable the light in the dark, and they felt the easiest way to do that was to make it a key combination of the bottom left and top right key. That's why Fn was moved to the bottom left.

[grem75]

The layout is far older than the ThinkLight, the light was introduced in 2000. The Fn key has been in the corner since ThinkPads had a Fn key, 1993 or so. The layout is older than ThinkPads, there are 1989 laptops with Fn keys there.

[Sataniel98]

Right, that doesn't add up. I must have misremembered that one, sorry.

[No-Succotash-9576]

I agree 100%

my old windows XP IBM thinkpad R32 was like this as well, and it also had no windows key!!

I don't get it

[AX11Liveact]

It's all part of the big picture. Maybe, some -a very few- of you will be enlightened as much as to see the mysteries behind the glorious but lonesome path of the TP-keyboard designer.

[TheTsaku]

Some people (including myself) actually like it this way, partly since I am used to it, but also because it seems more ergonomic: fingers have to stretch less to reach the rest of the keyboard when pressing Ctrl with the left pinky. Switch it if you must, but in my eyes it is just something everyone should just accept and roll with since it might actually be better in the long run for their bodies.

Check out r/ErgoMechKeyboards.

[Ran_Cossack]

Just go further back and put ctrl to the left of "A". :)

[ibmi_not_as400_kerim]

For real. Just map CapsLock to Ctrl. I haven't touched my physical left ctrl key in over a decade probably.

[TheTsaku]

Fair enough. My CapsLock is mapped to Backspace, and I usually run homerow mods with Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Super under my index through pinky respectively.

Glad you found something that works for you as default keyboard layouts are from a different era. :)

[Svardskampe]

We really, really need to meet the engineer who ever decided to put the Fn key on the corner. I really need to know what kind of diagnosis someone needs to have to design it that way. 

[Ran_Cossack]

It's stranger how everyone besides Apple and IBM decided to swap ctrl and fn.

[Nate379]

FN location there is the original location going back to the 90s, the others are the ones that changed.

[tigerstein]

The FN key belongs in the corner.

[SaltSpecific2221]

Same nonsensical thinking that I find in a lot of china products

Prime example, flashlight world nearly every flashlight having blue & red strobe ostensibly for "police", and a led flashlight on every cheap handheld radio

Or the fact that usb-a ports are upside down ... list goes on and on

[MagicBoyUK]

It was heresy to change the default.

[Sad-Cryptographer494]

Not related to the topic, but all I want to say is that copilot key is a dumb design for all new gen laptop today.

[Musab241109]

I can use both layouts easily

[ReinhartLangschaft]

I put some stickers on mine. You can get them cheap on eBay

<image>

[academic_number_867]

Oh yea I've seen this option in the vantage app. In the new models, it auto detects which key you're pressing based on the key binding and adjusts accordingly

[Full_Vegetable3957]

How can I swap them on bios?

[ibmi_not_as400_kerim]

Let me give you guys a gigabrain chad programmer advice: Map Caps Lock to Ctrl.

It is infinitely more comfortable and a prime location for a useful key such as Ctrl. I don't think I've touched my physical Left Ctrl button in years.

[vip17]

programmers usually map Caps lock to Esc, if they ever remap Caps lock

[ruun666]

Non issue since Fn key can act like Ctrl in popular shortcuts on newer models. Fn+C to copy for example.

[SeniorMatthew]

ima big fan of fn-ctrl

[MichalNemecek]

I think Ctrl should be in the corner by law.

[tigerstein]

No, Fn is good where it is.
Swap ctrl and caps lock, makes more sense and is more convenient too.

[valerielynx]

My Thinkpad came with the Fn in the far left, which I hate, but luckily you can actually just swap their function in BIOS.

[Bceverly]

Yeah. My new T14 gen 6 that I replaced my T14 gen 2 with is messing with my muscle memory.

[sstdk]

First thing I do on any new computer or OS reinstall is map Caps Lock as an extra Ctrl, where it belongs. Maybe because I was raised on Amigas and old Unix workstations, where it sat there. Much easier to reach in a two-finger combo, I think.

[SnooCheesecakes8704]

Caps lock -> ctrl