this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
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So, what's the deal with NumLock? I have it tuned on in the BIOS and in KDE settings, yet every time I boot up my PC or open the terminal as super user, it is turned off. Any way to deal with this? That happened on Bazzite, Fedora and now Cachy. I have a 100% keyboard and I want to use all 100% of it.

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[–] Vorpal@programming.dev 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't know the answer (I don't care about numlock myself), but the arch wiki has an article on this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Activating_numlock_on_bootup

Perhaps that will be useful to you. In general checking the arch wiki is a good idea for any Linux issues, even if you don't run arch, many things still apply to other distros and the articles are of very high quality.

In this case, "Early bootup (mkinitcpio)" would likely not apply to most other distros that aren't based on Arch, but the rest looks to apply widly.

It is worth noting that in the KDE section it mentions the need to apply two settings, perhaps that could be it?

[–] miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 month ago

As a long time Slackware user, I second this opinion. The Arch wiki is gold for all Linux users.

[–] some_random_nick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Tnx, I'll give it a read.

[–] xxce2AAb 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Go to System Settings > Input & Output > Keyboard, in the Hardware tab, in the NumLock on Plasma Startup section, choose the desired NumLock behavior.

For this to work, make sure that System Settings > System > Session > Background Services > Keyboard Daemon is enabled.

Source

[–] some_random_nick@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, those settings were on. I'll read up on the article linked above and see if I can make it work.

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] xxce2AAb -2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Then refer to the source for other ways to go about it.

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

No answer on Bazzite source I could find - just says check bios. That's why I'm here too, and tried something from Arch.

[–] thedaemon@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because for some reason Linux developers do not use the number pad. This is the worst default.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev -2 points 1 month ago

I use the NumPad.
Without NumLock

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I've been wondering about this. I've only had this issue with Fedora based distros, but not Ubuntu or Debian based ones. It's extremely annoying, and the system settings having it on and same with bios don't do anything. Num Lock is on by default for Mint for example - same system. Even freaking windows.

[–] some_random_nick@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

These are strange times for the NumLock club. Strange times...