Archive for May 7th, 2007

Typing Special Keys under Linux

Monday, May 7th, 2007

Some special characters like ~ (tilde) cannot be typed by simply pressing the key combination. This is true at least for german keyboard layouts and Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) and 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).

To prevent this behaviour and display the character upon the first stroke add the following to you /etc/X11/xorg.conf under the section Input Device for identifier Generic Keyboard:

Option "XkbVariant"  "nodeadkeys"

My section looks like this:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Generic Keyboard"
        Driver          "kbd"
        Option          "CoreKeyboard"
        Option          "XkbRules"      "xorg"
        Option          "XkbModel"      "pc105"
        Option          "XkbLayout"     "de"
        Option          "XkbVariant"    "nodeadkeys"
EndSection

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