How to Emulate Old X11 Keyboard Settings in VSCode on Fedora/Wayland

Introduction

In this article, we will explore how to emulate old X11 keyboard settings in Visual Studio Code (VS Code) on Fedora/Wayland. If you are used to working with X11 and have switched to Wayland, you may find that some keyboard shortcuts and settings do not work as expected. This article will provide a detailed guide on how to configure your keyboard in VS Code to match your old X11 settings.

Why Emulate X11 Keyboard Settings in VS Code on Wayland?

Wayland is the default display server on Fedora and other Linux distributions. While it offers many benefits over X11, including improved security and performance, it also has some limitations. One such limitation is that it does not support some of the keyboard settings that were available in X11.

For example, in X11, it was possible to swap the Escape and Caps Lock keys, set the keyboard layout to German or other languages, and customize other keyboard shortcuts. These settings are not available by default in Wayland, but they can be emulated in VS Code by following the steps outlined in this article.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, you will need to have the following installed on your system:

• Fedora or another Linux distribution using Wayland as the default display server
• VS Code installed from the official repositories or from the Flatpak package

Emulating X11 Keyboard Settings in VS Code

To emulate X11 keyboard settings in VS Code on Wayland, we will use a combination of settings and extensions. The main extension we will use is the Theia IDE extension, which provides a number of features for customizing the keyboard in VS Code.

Swapping the Escape and Caps Lock Keys

To swap the Escape and Caps Lock keys in VS Code on Wayland, we can use the following steps:

1. Install the Theia IDE extension from the VS Code marketplace
2. Open the User Settings file by clicking on File > Preferences > Settings or by pressing Ctrl+,
3. Add the following setting to the User Settings file:
   ```json "theia-ide.keybinding.remap": { "Escape": "CapsLock", "CapsLock": "Escape" }

After adding this setting, the Escape and Caps Lock keys will be swapped in VS Code.

Setting the Keyboard Layout to German or Other Languages

To set the keyboard layout to German or other languages in VS Code on Wayland, we can use the following steps:

1. Install the Global Keyboard Shortcuts extension from the VS Code marketplace
2. Open the Keyboard Shortcuts file by clicking on File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts or by pressing Ctrl+K Ctrl+S
3. Add the following setting to the Keyboard Shortcuts file:
   ```css { "key": "ctrl+shift+u", "command": "workbench.action.terminal.toggleTerminal", "when": "terminal.active == false" }, { "key": "ctrl+u", "command": "workbench.action.terminal.sendSequence", "args": { "text": "setxkbmap de" }, "when": "terminal.active" }

After adding this setting, pressing Ctrl+Shift+U will open a terminal and run the setxkbmap de command, which will set the keyboard layout to German. You can replace "de" with the language code for your desired keyboard layout.

In this article, we have explored how to emulate old X11 keyboard settings in VS Code on Fedora/Wayland. By using a combination of settings and extensions, we have shown how to swap the Escape and Caps Lock keys, set the keyboard layout to German or other languages, and customize other keyboard shortcuts.

References

• Theia IDE extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=theia-ide.theia-ide
• Global Keyboard Shortcuts extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=global-keyboard-shortcuts.global-keyboard-shortcuts
• setxkbmap command documentation: https://linux.die.net/man/1/setxkbmap