Wednesday 14 September 2011

Tilda in Virtualbox Linux guest for OSX host

As much as I love my Mac, there are some really annoying things. One of which is the keyboard. Why Apple think a delete key is unnecessary only they know!

Anyway, I run a Linux guest using VirtualBox on my Mac and regardless of which keyboard layout you choose the tilda key is not accessible. The solution is to create a .xmodmaprc file in your home directory

In that file add:
!map tilda and grave
keycode 94 = grave asciitilda

Use the file by typing
xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc

To make it stick you need to logout, login. A dialog will pop up asking if you want to load the xmodmaprc file. Move the file across and click okay