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I migrated from Mint 17.3 MATE to Mint 19 MATE and my Ctrl+Alt+Shift keyboard shortcuts stopped working.

If I try to enter a Ctrl+Alt+Shift shortcut in mate-keybinding-properties, the Alt doesn't register

For example: If I press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+X, it registers as Ctrl+Shift+X.

Is there a way to fix it?

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
6

This is an Xorg bug and as I understand it manifests itself by Xorg giving preference to shorter shortcuts before more complex ones that include the same keys as a subset.

There is a patch in the Freedesktop bugzilla ticket and you can install it using the commands below (documented already in this Cinnamon issue on Github):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nrbrtx/xorg-hotkeys
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
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  • Thank you, it works! But to see the changes I had to restart the system.
    – Serhiy Zaharchenko
    Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 14:26
  • It didn't work for me in Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia. Even ALT+TAB fails intermittently. Moving window between monitors with SHIFT+SUPER+ARROW rarely works.
    – Eduardo
    Commented Mar 18, 2020 at 16:21
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    Which patch is to install? I will be glad not to upgrade all my system through apt dist-upgrade for only this feature...
    – Olivier Faucheux
    Commented May 28, 2020 at 7:51
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It is an old bug (check the bugtracker here), and there is a patch:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update

# install the patch from ppa
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Explanation

As I understood, Linux Mint starting from the version 19 uses the updated version of the XOrg-system, which uses the keypress event instead of the old good keyrelease, and now the shortest shortcuts hide the longer ones. This behavior is encouraged by XOrg itself.

The installed patch changes the settings of the XOrg (though, I'm not sure about the last statement).

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    Mint v19 Tara x86_64, add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa fails with HTTP Error 404: Not Found, then Cannot add PPA: ''This PPA does not support bionic''..
    – agc
    Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 10:32
  • You are right. I have checked in Ubuntu 16.04 vs 18.04. On 16.04 layout is changing while I was releasing Left shift or Alt. I'm trying to find hot to change behavior for 18.04
    – UNIm95
    Commented Aug 4, 2019 at 15:32
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I started over from scratch (no problem there) and migrated only some of my select settings and everything worked all right.

Then the problem resurfaced when I added a different keyboard layout and set Alt+Shift as the key combo to switch layouts.

It looks like in Mint 19, unlike in Mint 17.3 (I imagine the underlying Ubuntus will probably be affected too), there's some kind of a conflict between the two settings.

I "solved" the problem by setting Both Alts as my layout switching combo, but I would call the conflict a bug.

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grep "_alt_" /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg

to view all binding with alt or ctrl altshiftx You can even modify it at your preference.

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  • Thanks. It's only getting me ` altwin:ctrl_alt_win = +altwin(ctrl_alt_win) altwin:swap_alt_win = +altwin(swap_alt_win) grp:ctrl_alt_toggle = +group(ctrl_alt_toggle) grp:ctrl_alt_toggle_bidir = +group(ctrl_alt_toggle_bidir) terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp = +terminate(ctrl_alt_bksp) `. No conflict with the keybindings I'm trying to setup (/carry over from my old system).
    – Petr Skocik
    Commented Aug 11, 2018 at 11:24
  • It looks like I might be affected by this bug github.com/mate-desktop/mate-control-center/issues/132
    – Petr Skocik
    Commented Aug 11, 2018 at 11:36
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The problem only occurs when several keyboard layouts are installed (see https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/766). I have removed my second layout and the shortkeys now run.

However: no shortkey was defined for the switch between the layouts, so I can't understand, why a problem occurred.

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