The CapsLock key is one of the best examples of persistent usability failure; it continues to appear on just about every English-language keyboard, despite the fact that —aside from no-one ever uses it— it is an active hindrance to both the average typist and the sedulous coder…

As a matter of course, I remove it in my Arch machines with an entry in my .xinitrc, but in Ubuntu/Gnome, there is no such file. Consequently, there is this equally effective way of dispatching the CapsLock, or in my case, mapping it to something actually useful, Esc.

First, create the mapkey file in your home directory:

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xmodmap -pke > ~/.xmodmap.mapkey

Then open the file and edit it:

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vim ~/.xmodmap.mapkey

Look for the CapsLock key, on my machine it is 66 (you can use xev to locate all of your key codes), and then wreak your revenge. Just deleting everything after keycode 66 =

will render it useless, which may suit your style. I change the entry to make it another Escape key:

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keycode 66 = Escape NoSymbol Escape NoSymbol Escape

Log out and when you log back in, you have a useful key.

Updated for 10.04

The above hack was for 9.10 and earlier versions of Ubuntu. I have no idea why, but it (alone) doesn’t work in Lucid Lynx. You need a couple of extra steps:

Open System > Preferences > Startup Applications and add two new items:

• Clear the CapsLock key with xmodmap -e "clear Lock
• Map it to Escape by pointing to your xmodmap file

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xmodmap ~/.xmodmap.mapkeys

Now, whenever you login the script(s) will run and your CapsLock will map to something actually useful, like Escape.