Hello.

Wierd Problem.

Random characters popping up in terminal without me typing it.(like a string of "^[ OR"s)

When booting Fedora, string of "^[[ C " appearing. Then instead of the bar showing booting progress, the screen starts to blink with lots of info about the startup process.

When using apps like firefox, thunderbird, gedit etc, in between typing, the cursor goes straight into the "Find in page" bar, and then the app tries to iteratively find the string typed into it, making the screen go up and down.

Now, on rebooting, the characters, @ and " has exchanged places in the keyboard!!!!

Please help.

Is it a USB or PS/2 keyboard ?

Maybe the keyboard is failing, try a spare.

Its on my laptop. Is there any way to disable the laptop keyboard and make Linux use the spare one as default for the time being?

I would first try just plugging the USB keyboard in.

To disable any input device use xinput:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=990273

You can also try the Fn keys on the laptop.