Remap Capslock to Escape

Caps Lock has always been a useless key. It has a purpose fewer than once a month yet snares the careless typist daily. With this trick you can remap it to the Escape key and transform this useless pain into a convenient key for vi!

Remapping for X-Windows

Put this in some file, such as .xmodmap.

! Remap CapsLock to escape
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
keysym Caps_Lock = Escape

Now you can edit your .xinitrc and add:

xmodmap .xmodmap

Remapping for the Console

To also remap at the console you need to do something slightly different. Edit some file, such as /etc/keymap, and insert the following test:

keycode 58 = Escape

Now you can remap Caps Lock manually by the command loadkeys /etc/keycode, or you can put loadkeys /etc/keycode into your /etc/rc.local to have the command executed at boot.