by Escape and Control keys historically belong on the left side, right next to the “A” key in the home row:
(Thanks to Wikipedia for the keyboard layout graphic.)
Nowadays they have drifted away from the home row, which adds wear and tear to your fingers and steals valuable time.
To get back to this key layout, I’ve remapped, on my IBM PC compatible keyboard, the Caps Lock key to Control, and the Tab key to Escape.
Now I don’t have a Tab key which I use for switching windows in GNOME because I haven’t installed xmonad yet. So I remapped the Escape key to Tab.
Then I physically removed the left Control key from my keyboard (yeah, just popped it off) to break the habit of using it, and to build a new habit of using the former Caps Lock key instead.
Here is my .xmodmap:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! Set the right Windows key to be a modifier key (control) ! keycode 116 = Control_R add Control = Control_R ! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! make Caps Lock physical key into the Control logical key ! clear Lock ! ‘‘clear Lock’’ will remove all any keys that were bound to the ! shift lock modifier. ! add control = Caps_Lock !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! Swap the Escape and Tab keys ! keycode 23 = Escape keycode 9 = Tab ! ! note: use "xev" to get keycodes for physical keys !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! note: use "xmodmap -e '...'" to run an xmodmap command from the command line