To set up RSI-friendly key remapping under the new "X Keyboard Extension" keyboard mapping system. 1) Make a file called xfree86rsi from /usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes/xfree86. (This is its location in Ubuntu F.) The old and new files for Ubuntu F are in this directory. 2) Add two lines to /usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes.dir. Again, old and new files for Ubuntu F are in this directory. The new file is called keycodes.dir.rsi, but it should replace keycodes.dir. 3) Use these aliases to switch between old and new: alias remap='setxkbmap -keycodes "xfree86rsi+aliases(qwerty)"' alias unmap='setxkbmap -keycodes "xfree86+aliases(qwerty)"' All of this assumes that "xfree86+aliases(qwerty)" is your default keyboard mapping. The way to determine whether that is the case is to run "setxkbmap us -print" (if you are using the US English keyboard); the output should look something like xkb_keymap { xkb_keycodes { include "xfree86+aliases(qwerty)" }; xkb_types { include "complete" }; xkb_compat { include "complete" }; xkb_symbols { include "pc(pc105)+us" }; xkb_geometry { include "pc(pc105)" }; }; Chart of remapped keys f1 = f2 = "-" and "_" f3 = "=" and "+" f4 = "[" and "{" f5 = "]" and "}" f6 = "\" and "|" f7 = "'" and '"' f8 = "/" and "?"