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My compose key suddenly stopped working few days ago, without me doing anything, apparently. I set it to right ctrl, but it doesn't work anymore. If I try another key (e.g. right alt), it doesn't work anymore. Anyway the system recognizes that that key is "special" and will not work for anything else (e.g. if right ctrl is set as compose key, I cannot use it to select multiple items, it's exactly as a dead key).

Running Ubuntu Studio: Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS with XFCE 4.14 as desktop environment.

What I have tried

  1. To set the compose key I edit the Settings > Keyboard > Layout, it just doesn't work. The rest of the layout settings are:

Keyboard model: Generic 105-key PC (intl.)

Change layout option: -

Keyboard layout: English (US)


  1. The file /etc/default/keyboard contains the following lines:
# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE

# Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS="compose:rctrl"

BACKSPACE="guess"

I have tried to edit it directly or via the command sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration: I can edit it but the changes have no effect, the compose key still doesn't work (even after reboot).


  1. I have read in many answers and comments about the files ~/.xsessionrc and ~/.xsession. I did not have these files (but I have the ~/.xsession-errors file), so I tried to create them and write a single line:
/usr/bin/setxkbmap -option "compose:rctrl"

None of these methods worked. If you don't know how to fix my compose key, do you know alternative ways to quickly digit accented letters? I have a english keyboard on my laptop but I often have to write emails in Italian or Spanish, and I need accented letters for those languages.

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  • what is the output of setxkbmap -query in terminal?
    – Andra
    Mar 23, 2022 at 17:21
  • rules: evdev // model: pc105 // layout: us // options: compose:rctrl Mar 24, 2022 at 15:01

1 Answer 1

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Is it possible that the problem lies with the "rctrl"? Have you tried "ralt" just in case something else is using "rctrl"?

I just used

setxkbmap -option "compose:ralt"

successfully to get my Lubuntu 20.04LTS system's compose key working. Nothing else worked...I didn't have to log out or reboot, either. It worked immediately. Maybe it's just something about the key?

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  • I tried again, but didn't work. I ended up using rctrl to switch between english, italian and spanish layouts to be able to use accented letters and other special characters... Oct 30, 2022 at 13:03
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    Nov 1, 2022 at 15:14

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