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I have an annoying UK keyboard which has an AltGr key where the right Alt key is on a US keyboard. This is really annoying when using Gnome which makes heavy use of the Alt/Meta key.

Does anyone know how I can map the AltGr key to the Alt key?

Regards,

Chris

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2 Answers

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xmodmap

The 'shift, lock, control, modN' on the left are what X sees and cares about. The keysyms on the right map to them. Mode_switch is your AltGr key. Move it to join the others at mod1:

xmodmap -e 'clear mod5'
xmodmap -e 'add mod1 = Mode_switch'
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No that didn't work for me, fired up emacs and AltGr-v gives me “ instead of scrolling the page up as it would with alt-v. – ChrisInCambo Oct 9 '09 at 4:28
Those specific commands didn't work, or looking at the output of 'xmodmap' and moving the keysym didn't work? You can use 'xev' to help with this: run it, mouse over the window, and press modded keys. – ayrnieu Oct 9 '09 at 5:05
The command worked and here is the output of the xmodmap: shift Shift_L (0x32), Shift_R (0x3e) lock Caps_Lock (0x42) control Control_L (0x25), Control_R (0x69) mod1 Alt_L (0x40), Meta_L (0xcd) mod2 Num_Lock (0x4d) mod3 mod4 Super_L (0xce), Hyper_L (0xcf) mod5 ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c), Mode_switch (0xcb) – ChrisInCambo Oct 9 '09 at 5:11
Sorry for the mess, is seems like this site strips line breaks from comments. – ChrisInCambo Oct 9 '09 at 5:11
That output shows that you haven't cleared mod5, and that you haven't added Mode_switch to mod1. xmodmap -e changes like this are temporal: you can blow them away with setxkbmap, for instance. – ayrnieu Oct 9 '09 at 5:17
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up vote 2 down vote

For those UK users still pulling their hairs out, this worked for me:

xmodmap -e "clear mod5"
xmodmap -e "keycode 108 = Alt_L"

Explanation: The first line removes the current behaviour of your AltGr (which is assigned to the mod5 modifier). The second takes the AltGr key (which on my keyboard produces a keycode of 108), and maps that to whatever keycode your Alt_L key is mapped to.

If you have no idea what is going on with keycodes and keysyms, I found this xmodmap introduction very useful.

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