This is a quick bugfix post that might help someone else.

I just installed Xubuntu 9.10 Karmic on my laptop, and found that the Escape key wouldn’t work in the Terminal application. This makes using vim a bit tricky. (It’s not impossible: you can use Ctrl-[ instead, but that’s annoying if it’s a change from what you’re used to.)

I haven’t got to the bottom of the problem, but the fix was to clear two keyboard shortcuts:

  • Settings → Window Manager → Keyboard → Cancel (default is Escape)
  • Settings → Keyboard → Application Shortcuts → xfce4-popup-menu (default is Ctrl-Escape)

I guess that the problem is something to do with Escape and Ctrl-Escape not being interpreted as distinct sequences, but I’m not sure. In any case, I’ve never knowingly used Ctrl-Escape, so it’s no loss to me.

I also don’t know whether Ubuntu proper shares the same problem.