Fixing the caps lock key in Gnome in Fedora 18

I like to set my caps lock key to left control. Previously you could do this via the Gnome System Settings control panel. In Fedora 18 it's not possible as far as I can tell.

The gsettings command to make caps lock act as a control key in Gnome is this:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options "['ctrl:nocaps']"

view raw gistfile1.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

If you are worried about losing any other settings you might have in xkb-options, then do this:

	# Take a look at your current xkb-options
	gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options
	# If you see @as [] then just run the command from above
	# Otherwise you need to preserve the existing options (such as foo:bar below)
	# while inserting the new one
	gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options "['ctrl:nocaps', 'foo:bar']"

view raw gistfile2.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This is an explanation I got just now (from someone who should know about this stuff):

"GNOME 3.0 shipped with input methods separately from xkb, now the two have been brought together to have one dialog. I suspect xkb options will come back, but that'll take another iteration"

Ps, for more info on gnome input sources, see these blog posts by mclasen.

Pps, I've been an anti-caps lock campaigner for a while now :)