Microsoft Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard Linux Driver

Posted on Jan 10, 2010

As of Linux Kernel 2.6.24, you no longer need to patch the kernel to get your Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard to work. With kernel 2.6.30+ and possibly lower, the options that you need to enable to get the keyboard to work has changed. The old settings that needed to be enabled were:

Device Drivers  --->
    Input Device Support  --->
        <M> Event Interface
    USB Support  --->
        <M> USB Human Interface Device (full HID) support
        [*] HID input layer support
        [*] HID simple driver interface
        <M>   Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 Driver

The event Interface has remained consistant. However, the USB section has changed over the different kernel releases:

Device Drivers  --->
    [*] HID Defices  --->
        {*}  Generic HID support
        <*>  USB Human Interface Device (full HID) support
             Special HID drivers  --->
                 <*>  Microsoft

If you choose to go the module way, then the module’s name will be: hid-microsoft