When I type a colon using the right shift key, it works normally, but when I try typing a colon using the left shift key, nothing happens (nothing types). Sometimes, I can type a colon by first, pressing the left shift and semicolon/colon keys together then releasing them, then clicking only the semicolon/colon key again, but this works only intermitterntly. Both shift keys work normally for typing upper case letters. Neither shift key works for typing a pipe (vertical line). This problem started recently. All was normal with the keyboard not long ago. Any ideas? I exoerimented with different sticky key settings and keyboard layouts, and rebooting, but no fix. I am running Linux Mint 14 with Mate desktop on an Acer Aspire.

I ran into that using Debian Jessie, no desktop, command line only, on a Hummingboard. No pipe, but I don't know if the left shift versus right shift caused a different behavior. I ended up not using that distribution.

Mint 14 is very old, they stopped supporting it over a year ago, and it was never a LTS. Consider either rolling back to 13 or upgrading to 17.

Moderator, can this post be moved to the Linux-General category? It might get more responses there.