The default install of aptosid (formerly sidux) maps the windows key to compose (Multi_Key), which is used for entering special characters with key combinations. This drives me nuts, because (a) I use the windows key as a modifier for launching my most common applications and (b) I never need to enter the special characters. Today I finally figured out why this is happening, and how to resolve it properly without an xmodmap band-aid.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Looking in \/var\/log\/Xorg.0.log, I noticed this: Turns out this can be changed by running dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration<\/tt> or by editing \/etc\/default\/keyboard<\/tt> manually, and then restarting the entire system<\/strong>. That’s right, restarting hal and X, as suggested in the config file, was not enough. Makes me feel nostalgic for windows…<\/p>\n The problem with using xmodmap is that if the keyboard is hotplugged, the settings are lost. It’s also a pain to get xmodmap to run consistently when X starts across all login managers and manual startx. However because of the bizarre restart requirement, it may be useful. The keycode can be determed by running xev<\/tt> and pressing the windows key; mine was 133. Then run xmodmap: The default install of aptosid (formerly sidux) maps the windows key to compose (Multi_Key), which is used for entering special characters with key combinations. This drives me nuts, because (a) I use the windows key as a modifier for launching my most common applications and (b) I never need to enter the special characters. Today […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux","tag-xorg-keyboard-map"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bda.ath.cx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nOption \"xkb_options\" \"lv3:ralt_switch,compose:lwin\"
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\n
\nxmodmap -e 'keycode 133 = Super_L'
\n<\/code>
\nThis issue seems like a bug in the aptosid installer (or maybe the debian packages); if a user chooses US american keyboard layout, it’s very unlikely that they will use the compose key. At the very least the user should be prompted for this during install.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"