I've been searching the web for a solution but I must be using all of the wrong key words. I am not finding a way to disable the two Win keys common on most keyboards nowadays.

I prefer this to be system wide, something in xorg.conf.d, or rc.local.

Thanks.

I guess you are looking for something like this:

http://wiki.bodhilinux.com/doku.php?...able_caps_lock

I think with xev you should be able to detect which symbol the win keys actually have. Don't know though where to put this to make it available for all users - if you know it, an update is appreciated

Why disable them? Why not use them for something useful (don't ask me what )?

I don't understand disabling. They are just keys. Some tiling wm's use these keys for kbd shortcuts. I'm not trying to be critical, but my curiosity is piqued.

The Windows keys are commonly referred to as Meta4 (Alt for example is Meta1). If you have no keyboard combination configured that uses Meta4 the keys are effectively disabled.

I don't question the usages of other people when they ask for help. Geez.

I want to disable the keys because the only place I encounter them is on the laptop. My desktop keyboard does not have the keys. I keep inadvertently bumping the keys and I'm tired of popup menus appearing that interrupts my typing.

I hate laptop keyboards. Too small. Keys in non-standard locations. I use the laptop for testing. Sometimes I ssh into the laptop just to avoid using the keyboard. Yeah, I could buy an external full size keyboard to avoid the crappy design of a laptop keyboard....only to be confronted again with the Win keys.

That might help. Thanks.

That might help too. Thanks.

1 members found this post helpful.

You can use 'xev' to find key codes and then see if that helps you:

http://www.linuxscrew.com/2008/09/15...-key-in-linux/

Sorry. But thanks for explaining anyways.

Just out of curiosity, which DE or WM are you using?

Buy a gaming keyboard, those usually have a switch to disable the Windows keys.

Looking at the various xinitrc.* in /etc/X11/xinit, I see that you should be able to add your xmodmap option to /etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap to get system wide keycode/keysym settings.

With my keyboard, the file would be:

I only have one win key.

Most of the time Trinity, sometimes KDE4. The biggest culprit of the popup menu is kate/kwrite. Bumping the right Win key (Super_R?) is the same as a "right-click" in kate/kwrite. which invokes a context popup menu. I get the same behavior in KDE4 kate.

That said I tried adding /etc/X11/xinit/Xmodmap:

# disable the left win key
keycode 133 =
# disable the right win key
keycode 135 =

I tried ~/.Xmodmap and adding the xmodmap -e command in a desktop file in autostart. None of that works.

I still get the popup menu in kate, both Trinity and KDE4.

Yet I always could execute the xmodmap -e command in a terminal window and succeed.

Then I discovered that directly running 'xmodmap /etc/X11/xinit/Xmodmap' in a terminal window resulted in complaints. Oh. So I remove the comments in /etc/X11/xinit/Xmodmap. After removing the comments the file worked as intended when I started X.

Oh, wait! Comments in this file are marked by an exclamation mark, not a hash mark.

The damned Win keys now are impotent.

No. Wait.

The Xmodmap file works in Trinity but not KDE4. Almost exact same xinit scripts. Both scripts run the command 'xmodmap /etc/X11/xinit/Xmodmap'.

I can run 'xmodmap /etc/X11/xinit/Xmodmap' manually in a terminal window and the commands work in KDE4.

I can copy /etc/X11/xinit/Xmodmap to ~/.Xmodmap then the commands work in KDE4.

But from /etc/X11/xinit/Xmodmap KDE4 balks. Trinity plays ball.

I am clueless.

I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. Next I'll discover I have a drinking problem. And that everybody is counting on me. Where is my auto-pilot?

P.S. Yes, I edited my xinit scripts to use /etc/X11/xinit/Xmodmap and not /etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap.

1 members found this post helpful.

Have you tried what I suggested in post 7? You could possibly put it in rc.local.

rc.local will be of no help, when that is run the X server is not running.

FWIW, I use a ~/.Xmodmap file (for switching Escape and Caps-Lock) and it works fine, but that depends on how your ~/.xinitrc looks like. This is for example the one Slackware has for KDE:I have marked the important parts in bold, basically it says: If a file sysmodmap=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap exists, load it, but override it with ~/.Xmodmap, if it exists.

Vewwy sowwy, I weally am.

I hate them too. And they were the cause to go from concave keyboards to flat ones.