[Xfce] - Map [BackSpace] Key On Keyboard To [PauseBreak] Key On Keyboard?

Hi,

I installed openSUSE Tumbleweed 64Bit with the Xfce desktop environment onto an old notebook.
The notebook’s [BackSpace] key is unfortunately broken.
In Xfce, is there a way to map the [BackSpace] key to another working key like the [PauseBreak] key?
Let me know, this is for a friend, thanks!

Jesse

Short answer:

Temporary:

xmodmap -e "keycode 127 = BackSpace"

Permanent:

  • Create a file called ~/.Xmodmap with the following in it:
keycode 127 = BackSpace

Explanation:

Type in “xev” in a terminal and place the mouse curse inside the xev window. When you press backspace you will see it report that the keycode for backspace is 22 and the action is “BackSpace”. If you do the same for Pause key you will see that the keycode is 127 and the action is Pause.

To temporarily change the pause key to produce a backspace, you need to use xmodmap like so:


xmodmap -e "keycode <key_whose_action_i_want_to_change> = <action_to_change_to>"

In openSUSE to make the xmodmap change permanent, we create a ~/.Xmodmap file which as:


keycode <key_whose_action_i_want_to_change> = <action_to_change_to>

Note: This keycode change will only work for the one user and is hence not systemwide. Also this change only works whilst inside X Window System and won’t work when on the Linux console.