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Showing posts from December, 2025

Killing the CAPS LOCK Key Revisited from May 21, 2017

 For over a decade, I have been interested in disabling the damn CAPS LOCK key. I frequently press it accidentally and it is a continuing aggravation. Trying several methods, I found one that works and thought I would update the post and try to get the formatting correct. CAPS LOCK KILLED SUCCESS!! I stumbled upon the file /etc/default/keyboard . It reads: # KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE # Consult the keyboard(5) manual page. XKBMODEL=pc105 XKBLAYOUT=us XKBVARIANT= XKBOPTIONS= BACKSPACE=guess Consulting the man page for keyboard reveals the following interesting information: KEYBOARD(5)              Console-setup User's Manual     NAME keyboard - keyboard configuration file DESCRIPTION        The  keyboard file describes the properties of the keyboard. It is read by setupcon(1) in order to configure the keyboard on the  console.   In Debian  systems  the  default  keyboard la...

Zorin OS -- MS WIndows Killer?

   There have been several Linux distro releases in the past that claim to offer a MS Windows-like experience to woo new users to Linux, such as Corel Linux ,  Xandros Desktop , and Linspire/Lindows . These failed mostly because the commercial companies attempted to modify Linux enough to lock the users into their own walled garden. Interestingly, all these distros were based on Debian. A successful Debian-based distro is Canonical's Ubuntu . It doesn't attempt to strong-arm users into its walled garden, but does offer a few special things and a rich user and support environment. It's popularity is well-earned and spurred by its marketing. Zorin OS 18 is the latest entry into the fray and is a Ubuntu-based distribution , many calls it a "fork" since the UI is customized to mimic MS Windows. They do offer a free download ISO , so I attempted to install that in a VirtualBox VM. It hung up on my first attempt; problems with some LibreOffice packages, so I opted to N...