Hi everyone, I’m posting this here because it affects multiple distributions regardless of linux family tree. The issue concerns the delay with the Caps Lock key being related to the xorg.
The delay is visible when typing and using it to switch between upper and lowercase letters. This behavior steams from classic typewriters where Shift was used for switching when typing individual letters. Both Caps Lock and Num Lock aren’t released on click but rather when the key is released.
This is no problem on Windows and Mac, but it is present on Linux for more than a decade. While someone would say this isn’t bug but just a choice, it is still weird for people that are switching from Windows/Mac to Ubuntu or any other linux distribution. The patch to correct this is available from xorg and it would be nice if we could ship it with 18.04. It would also provide a choice for some and fix annoyance for other people.
For the very reason that it affects multiple Linux distributions, here is not the best place to discuss this issue. You should focus on having those patches accepted upstream.
As far as I understand, this would add an option, not fix an error, right? IMHO the lack of such an option is not important enough to motivate that we carry the patches in Ubuntu only.
It affects multiply distributions, but this problem has existed for almost decade, received various reports and no one bothered to even implement solution.
The problem is that the upstream could have applied these patches long ago but it didn’t.
This would fix the error not add the option. Or lets say it would add the behavior that is same across all other OS, but isn’t on Linux.
I’m looking to improve the desktop experience on Ubuntu for new users as well the current ones as much as possible. Even users looking to use Ubuntu on Windows face the same problem as the report states.
What other distributions want to do is up to their choice since it is hard to reach consensus to apply it across the board. If we do it, it could motivate others to change it and make one step towards making Linux user friendly.
If you still want to try to get the patches into Ubuntu only, you should file an Ubuntu bug report, attach uploadable debdiffs, and seek sponsorship for the changes. However, there is a great risk that those debdiffs would be rejected by the developers in the end, since this is an upstream matter by nature.
It’s not an error; it’s about different views on the desired behavior.
This is stated by the bug reporter in comment #15:
“The default definitely should not be changed. The XKB specification specifies the behaviour of locks, so changing this would be a bug. And my proposed workaround will not always behave intuitively. In particular, it will only work for ALPHABETIC keys to which alphabetic characters are mapped. It’s not something for everybody.”
