My Nokia N800 has to be mildly hacked in order to get my ThinkOutside Stowaway Sierra Keyboard to talk to it.

The method changes slightly from revision to revision of the N800 operating system.

The problem is: the ‘Fn’ key, as default-configured, brings up a popup menu for whatever application you are using.

Alas, that key must be chorded (Fn-Tab) to generate an ‘Escape’ key

As of today, with the latest cut, the hack to fix this is:

1. under hardware-keyboard (in ControlPanel) select “Generic 105-key PC” – I select the English(GB) keymapping, too.
2. open xterm, gain root privs by whatever means you need
3. cd /usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes
4. vi xfree86
5. comment-out the line which reads “<MENU> = 117;” by prefixing it with “//” (two slashes)
6. save the file
7. reboot.

Via http://www.mail-archive.com/maemo-developers@maemo.org/msg07136.html which provided the hint that keycode 117 is MENU.