dannyman.toldme.com

VMWare Workstation: Excessive Key Repeating in Ubuntu guest

I like to virtualize my workstation using VMWare Workstation. Lately, my Ubuntu (kubuntu) 12.04 guest would exhibit really annoying behavior whereby it would insert lots of extra letters as I typed, seemingly at random.

I cast about a few times for a fix. I tried VMWare KB 196, and a few solutions offered in an abandoned blog. But what did the trick is good old xset.

I added this to my .bashrc:

xset r rate 500 20

As I understand it, this means “key repeat only happens if you hold a key down for at least half a second, and then not for more than 20 times.”

My workstation has been way more pleasant to deal with ever since.