Comment 11 for bug 482623

this one annoys me royally, too. i did some investigations:

1) on your mac go to the system preferences -> expose and spaces
2) disable everything involving f-keys you might want to use. mac os will eat those key presses and it will never work.

3) launch terminal, connect to linux machine, run byobu
4) fn+f9 will work, other f-keys will not work

5) on the mac launch another terminal
6) set environent like "export TERM=vt100"
7) reconnect to linux machine, run byobu
8) fn+f2 thru fn+f8 will work, fn+f9 will not work

setting TERM=xterm-color results in the behavior described in step 3 and 4

you can set TERM via the preferences gui, too, but only xterm-color (the default) and vt100 will be of any use. both are not perfect though. hopefully someone can combine the benefits of both...