Disabling the Caps-Lock key

Are you one of those people who are simply annoyed by the Caps-Lock key? Good news: As a Linux user you don’t need to use pliers to get rid of it. You can simply shut it down. I would like to briefly present one way to do this here. It works with all window managers and desktops (but not in Linux text mode).

Procedure

The Caps-Lock key always has the code 66 on PC keyboards (If you are curious how to find out something like this, just call the small program xev and press Caps-Lock).

With the xmodmap program, you can assign a new function to this key – or even none at all. To do this, enter the following command in a terminal window:

user@linux> xmodmap -e "keycode 66 ="

That’s it. Over and out. A check with xev proves that there is no longer a function assigned to the key (keysym 0x0, NoSymbol):

user@linux> xev
KeyPress event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001,
    root 0x5e, subw 0x0, time 9781197, (74,70), root:(1069,126),
    state 0x0, keycode 66 (keysym 0x0, NoSymbol), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

Integration into the desktop

Fortunately, there is still one small thing missing: We have to make sure that this command is always executed automatically after logging in. Unfortunately this works differently on various desktops. With WindowMaker you can enter this command in ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/autostart. With Ubuntu/Gnome you create a file ~/.Xmodmap, which simply contains the line keycode 66 =. The next time you log in you will be asked if this keycode should be integrated.

If you are using KDE 4, create a text file (shell script) which contains only the above command, make it executable (chmod 755 file name) and put it in the directory ~/.kde4/Autostart/.