How many times have you used the caps lock key compare to the ctrl button? Once a year maybe? You must have experienced at least once a situation where you must enter your password, but your caps lock is on, thus you entered your password wrong.

So instead of having an “useless” button on your keyboad, how about changing to a button that you use everyday?

In my opinion, I feel that the left ctrl key is way too low on the keyboard. My pinky finger has to make one heck of an effort to press that key! So at the end of the day, after hundred of “copy/paste”, this little finger has hurt his back and won’t work anymore… Jokes aside, it has been like a year I change it to left ctrl, and I feel that typing has been smoother now.

Anyway, here are the steps to change on XUbuntu (best OS I found so far) and Windows:

On Xubuntu

• Xubuntu → Settings Manager → Session and Startup
• Then in the Sessions and Startup configurator go
• Application Autostart (tab at the top) → Add (bottom button)

Now on the Add Application screen

1
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Name: Remap CapsLk to Ctrl
Description: Remaps the CapsLk key to Control
Command: /usr/bin/setxkbmap -option "ctrl:nocaps"

On Windows

• Open regedit.exe
• Look for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout
• Now change the binary values to look like this:

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