SOLVED: Dying lshift key=> how to remap caps lock to shift, if possible please?

[computerguy]

Due to recent relocation my 2 spare KBs are unreachable, maybe even 'till spring.

I won't bore anyone here with WHY this is important - I'll just say that for now I NEED to make this KB work better somehow.

My thought is to somehow remap a nearby key as the shift key - caps lock will be best, but if not possible then l-ctrl or the silly windoze key would make things better.

My searching showed that gnome-tweaks might do this - but all its options are locking ones.

I've tried some other remapping in the past with poor results, which I posted about here as well.

Any/all help will be hugely appreciated !!

Thanks for reading.

[ericmarceau]

Have a look at this earlier posting by one of the Community's respected and very helpful members:

Make your own custom keyboard layout for Linux

An introduction which may be safely skipped A desire for custom keyboard layout is not very common, but it is in no sense unique. Usually, an interest to fancy keyboard layouts is inherent to multilingual persons. They are programmers, translators, journalists, (archeo-) linguists, touch-typists and simply people who do not have characters of their second or first language printed on the keys of their keyboards. Common denominator of their reasons for such a desire can be expressed in one word:…

The other option is to look at this article (also previously mentioned on this site):

Remap keys in the keyboard in Ubuntu

Admittedly "adjacent" to the topic, you may also wish to look at

How to include Mate custom keybinding in application package?

Hello, I am packaging an application for visually impaired and I would like to have a keybinding packaged with that as well, so that the app can be easily launched. Any idea how to do that? I thought I would package a gsettings override, something like ``` [org/mate/desktop/keybindings/custom0] action='lios' binding='<Alt><Mod4>l' name='Linux Intelligent OCR Software' ``` But what if there is already "custom0" keybinding defined? Thank you.

[computerguy]

Sincerest Thanks for your highly educational reply Ericmarceau !!

Eugene's thread seems a bit over-the-top for my need to just change a single key.

BC's post seems a great deal better for me & hopefully using that info I can remap caps lock to Lshift.

I'm concerned about just WHERE to place .xmodmap - I did 'whereis .xmodmap' & a ton of locations showed up !!

Looking further it seems to be placed in /home/user/, so I've tried that.

Viola !!
Problem solved.

I also remapped lshift as space just in case I screw up & use it, that way it'll either do nothing or make a space now.

Shortening this process for anyone else who may want TL:DR=>

• Open a terminal at your home directory;
• Run xmodmap -pke > .Xmodmap
• Using your chosen text editor, open /home/user/.Xmodmap
• Locate the keycodes you wish to change (I suggest making notes in a separate TXT file for 'just in case')
• Make your changes
• Save the file
• In your terminal, run xmodmap .Xmodmap

Test the changed keys !!

So long as you're satisfied & if you want them that way always, go to your startup apps & add:
xkbcomp /home/user/.xkbmap ":0"
Of course editing 'user' to whatever yours may be.

Before posting my query here I did do a bunch of searching both here & openly but did NOT come across the info shared here by Ericmarceau, so maybe this thread could help someone else who is still using a tired out 20+ y/o mechanical KB !!

Thanks Again.