Is there a way to set the keyboard character repeat rate to zero in Ubuntu?

November 29, 2007 7:57 PM

Is there a way to set the keyboard character repeat rate to zero in Ubuntu?

Following Cool Papa Bell's question:
Is there to lower the character repeat rate or to shut it off altogether, so that if you press and hold a key, you get only one character? In Ubuntu of course :)

posted by zouhair to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

If you use Xorg (which most ubuntu users do), then the magic command is:

xset r off

You can add this to your Xsession scripts, or just type it in a terminal as needed
posted by toxic at 8:22 PM on November 29, 2007

To turn it back on:

xset r on

And to change the time/delay:

xset r rate [X] [Y]

Where [X] is the number of milliseconds you'd like the system to wait before the key repeats, and [Y] is the number of times per second you'd like it to repeat once it's repeating.

"xset r rate 500 30" is what many people consider to be "normal" lowering the 500 will make the system wait longer before repeating. lowering the 30 will make the key repeat faster.
posted by toxic at 8:28 PM on November 29, 2007

System | Preferences | Keyboard | Keyboard, "Key presses repeate when key held down" -> no.
posted by cmiller at 8:30 PM on November 29, 2007

lowering the 500 will make the system wait longer before repeating. lowering the 30 will make the key repeat faster.

Feh... got that exactly backwards.

Lowering the 500 will make the system wait LESS before repeating a key.

Lowering the 30 will make the key repeat SLOWER.
posted by toxic at 8:30 PM on November 29, 2007

System | Preferences | Keyboard | uncheck the box "Key presses repeat when key is held down"

Easy Peasy

(seriously, xset? Maybe in Gentoo, but for Ubuntu: The Linux for the rest of us?)
posted by JJtheJetPlane at 6:39 AM on November 30, 2007

Whoops, cmiller was too succinct and I missed his answer.
posted by JJtheJetPlane at 6:41 AM on November 30, 2007