Remapping the Caps Lock key on Raspbian (Shallow Thoughts)

Remapping the Caps Lock key on Raspbian

I've remapped my CapsLock key to be another Ctrl key since time immemorial. (Actually, since the ridiculous IBM PC layout replaced the older keyboards that had Ctrl there already, to the left of the A.)

On normal current Debian distros, that's fairly easy: you can edit /etc/default/keyboard to have XKBOPTIONS="ctrl:nocaps.

You might think that would work in Raspbian, since it also has /etc/default/keyboard and raspi-config writes keyboard options to it if you set any (though of course CapsLock isn't among the choices it offers you). But it doesn't work in the PIXEL desktop: there, that key still acts as a Caps Lock.

Apparently lxde (under PIXEL's hood) overrides the keyboard options in /etc/default/keyboard without actually giving you a UI to set them. But you can add your own override by editing ~/.config/lxkeymap.cfg. Make the option line look something like this:

option = ctrl:nocaps

Then when you restart PIXEL, you should have a Control key where CapsLock used to be.