How to set compose key to pause in 13.10?

Solution 1:

I had the same problem and lost a couple of hours trying to resolve it.

I found a solution, based on what can be found here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ComposeKey.

This is what you need to do:

In the terminal type:

sudo gedit /etc/default/keyboard

After typing your administrator's password, the text editor will open. Find the line that reads:

XKBOPTIONS=""

Enter the desired key value between the quotation marks. In my case it was compose:lwin – to map the left Windows key as compose. In your case it should be: compose:paus. So the line should look like this

XKBOPTIONS="compose:paus"

A list of possible options can be found when you type

grep "compose:" /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst

in the terminal. Log out, log in again – should work just fine.

(PS: Why they turned off the possibility to customize this easily in the system settings, still remains an unresolved problem.)