Score:2

Ubuntu thinks Windows key is right super

ru flag

I'm on 20.04 Desktop, dual booting on a laptop with Windows.

Everything else works fine, but pressing the super key on my keyboard does nothing. I can press Super+A and it brings up the app overview no problem, but the super button by itself does nothing.

Going into Settings > Region & Language > Input Sources, my one and only keyboard is correctly set to English (US). However, clicking the little eye icon next to it that brings up the onscreen display of which button is being pressed, when I tap the super key on my keyboard (which is located to the left of the spacebar), Super R is the key that is highlighted onscreen.

Any ideas what's happening here?

Sadaharu Wakisaka avatar
pl flag
Welcome to AskUbuntu, your keyboard is either broken or not a US keyboard. `xev` to see what actually is.
Score:1
cn flag

There indeed appears to be a discrepancy between the standard keyboard layout definition you use and your physical keyboard. Your (only) Super key appears to emit keycode 134 rather than 133, so by default is mapped to Super_R rather than Super_L.

Modifying a keyboard layout involves editing source files. There is, however, an easy way to have your Super key reveal the Activities overview without changing more fundamental configurations. Issue the following command to have Super_R trigger the overview rather than Super_L:

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter overlay-key 'Super_R'

You can reset to the default setting by changing set by reset and leaving out 'Super_R'.

Score:0
it flag

In Ubuntu specifically (at least as of 20.04 LTS), "Super" is the name for the Windows key. On the "eyeball" widget that your question mentions, the keyboard is a PC keyboard. Laptop keyboards are laid out slightly differently. It shows the key to the right of the right Alt key as being a right Super key when, on US based laptops, it should be a Ctrl key, and the arrow keys should be tucked under the right Shift key instead of being in their own column.

However, when you go to define shortcuts in the "keyboard shortcuts" section of the menu, the correct names are shown for all keys, so it seems that this discrepancy is confined to the UI of that widget.

Nate T avatar
it flag
If you have any (bigger) external keyboards lying around, take a look at them as compared to the image in the widget. Im not sure why the developers decided to go with a desktop layout when, nowadays, most users will probably be using ubuntu on laptop. But I could be wrong there. Menu should probably be switchable between the two, or else the widget should define them as seperate layouts completely, as in [US-desktop] and [US-laptop].
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