Ubuntu
xserver-xorg-input-evdev package

  1. Bug #264196
  2. Comment #27

Comment 27 for bug 264196

Revision history for this message
Jorge Morais (jorgemorais) wrote : Re: [intrepid] keyboard Repeat Keys is failing to adjust, when AutoAddDevices is on

>I thought I would give a xset a try but I don't understand the syntax.

I think it is clear enough in the man page. The xset manpage has two paragraphs for the "r" option. The second paragraph says

If the server supports the XFree86-Misc extension, or the XKB
extension, then a parameter of ’rate’ is accepted and should be
followed by zero, one or two numeric values. The first specifies
the delay before autorepeat starts and the second specifies
the repeat rate. In the case that the server supports the XKB extension,
the delay is the number of milliseconds before autorepeat starts,
and the rate is the number of repeats per second. If the rate or delay is not given,
it will be set to the default value.

So if you want a reasonable delay of 500ms a a repeat rate of 25 characters per second, you would type
xset r rate 500 25
Typing xset q (which shows the parameters in effect) then reflects the change. I does *not*, however, make an actual difference in keyboard behavior (which is probably due to this very bug).

My workaround for this problem is adding the line
kbdrate -r 25 -d 500
to the file /etc/rc.local
This fixed the problem for me, with no visible side effects so far.