Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000's zoom slider on Ubuntu 12.10

For the past two years, I have been using the excellent Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 almost exclusively. This keyboard has a zoom slider in between the two main keys section that I just never use. I don’t understand what the reasoning behind having a zoom slider instead of a vertical slider, but today we’ll fix that for Ubuntu.

Open the /lib/udev/rules.d/95-keymap.rules file:

$ sudo nano /lib/udev/rules.d/95-keymap.rules

Let’s find the line that starts with ENV{ID_VENDOR}=="Microsoft". On my setup, it looks like:

ENV{ID_VENDOR}=="Microsoft", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="00db", RUN+="keymap $name 0xc022d zoomin 0xc022e zoomout"

Replace the zoomin value with pageup and the zoomout value with pagedown:

ENV{ID_VENDOR}=="Microsoft", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="00db", RUN+="keymap $name 0xc022d pageup 0xc022e pagedown"

After restarting your computer, your scrolling keys should now work.

Heads up! This tip has been tested on Ubuntu 12.10.