Is there any way of disabling the multimedia “personality” of the function keys - all I want is the usual function keys.
I have tried changing it in the BIOS but it doesn’t “stick”. grrr
You can try to remove the checkboxes (in this picture “Media Next”) for each and every one of the keys.
Otherwise there might be some dbus thing to turn off/change, I do not know.
Thank you for your reply - I will try that, but tomorrow. I’ve had enough of computers for one day.
Sadly my System Settings doesn’t have that screen. I’ve gone through all the screens and there’s not one that is even remotely close. DRAT! 
You don’t have shortcut settings?
Then it is a huge bug.