[SOLVED] Left Alt key not returning expected output?

[oshunluvr]

I'm away from home base so using my laptop instead of my desktop PC. Both running KDEneon User Edition which is essentially Kubuntu 18.04.

I was doing some of my routine mods - adding aliases, xmodmap swapping asciitilde/grave and bar/backslash, setting up sudoers, etc. - when I noticed my Left-Alt key does not work the same as it does on my desktop. Normally, Left Alt and RIght Alt behave very similarly. For example either Alt key combined with F2 opens krunner. But on the laptop the Left-Alt doesn't appear to do this, only the Right-Alt.

This laptop - Lenovo Yoga-730, circa 2019 - does have an Fn key on the left side that activates BIOS hardwired keys like volume, brightness, etc. That's really the only difference in the keyboards other than the lack of a keypad.

Xmodmap reveals:

 $ xmodmap -pk |grep -i alt
    108         0xffea (Alt_R)  0xffe8 (Meta_R) 0xffea (Alt_R)  0xffe8 (Meta_R)
    204         0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0xffe9 (Alt_L)

but I don't know if that's normal or not. Seems like it should say:

    204        0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0xffe7 (Meta_L) 0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0xffe7 (Meta_L)

Could someone verify this for me? The above xmodmap command should do it.

I can probably "fix" it using xmodmap but correcting the keymap would be more solid.

EDIT:
I also have Kubuntu 20.04 installed on this laptop, so I booted to it and the Left-Alt works as expected. I also discovered this:

  $ xmodmap -pk |grep -i alt[FONT=monospace]
     64         0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0xffe7 (Meta_L) 0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0xffe7 (Meta_L)
    108         0xffea (Alt_R)  0xffe8 (Meta_R) 0xffea (Alt_R)  0xffe8 (Meta_R)
    204         0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0xffe9 (Alt_L)[/FONT]

so it seems the cause has been discovered.

Edit2:

Back to KDEneon and I got this:

$ xmodmap -pk |grep 64
   40         0x0064 (d)      0x0044 (D)      0x0064 (d)      0x0044 (D)
   64         0xfe03 (ISO_Level3_Shift)       0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0xfe03 (ISO_Level3_Shift)
  164         0x1008ff30 (XF86Favorites)      0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0x1008ff30 (XF86Favorites)

[oshunluvr]

So this may seem obvious at this point, but opening System Settings and the Keyboard settings revealed that "Left Alt" was assigned as the "Third Level" key.

This keyboard has no Right Win key so I wonder if it set that itself or if I was playing around some time ago and clicked that Seems odd that I would do that because I have never used a "Third Level" modifier.

Anyway, it's "fixed"

[claydoh]

Here is my Lenovo Flex 15, very new, and probably somewhat similar, hardware-wise.

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#54FF54][B]dohbuoy@dohbuoy-FLEX-15IIL[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]:[/COLOR][COLOR=#5454FF][B]~[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]$ xmodmap -pk |grep -i alt[/COLOR]
     64         0xffe9 ([COLOR=#FF5454][B]Alt[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]_L)  0xffe7 (Meta_L) 0xffe9 ([/COLOR][COLOR=#FF5454][B]Alt[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]_L)  0xffe7 (Meta_L)[/COLOR]
    108         0xffea ([COLOR=#FF5454][B]Alt[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]_R)  0xffe8 (Meta_R) 0xffea ([/COLOR][COLOR=#FF5454][B]Alt[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]_R)  0xffe8 (Meta_R)[/COLOR]
    204         0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0xffe9 ([COLOR=#FF5454][B]Alt[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]_L)  0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0xffe9 ([/COLOR][COLOR=#FF5454][B]Alt[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]_L)[/COLOR]

[/FONT]

Note that my Neon has been upgraded to 20.04

Do you use screen rotation at all on your Yoga?
I am scratching my head with it, though I do have it working in x11, all the different scripts and utilities I can build seem to work but it feels like I am missing something.

[oshunluvr]

We cross-posted I guess. This had me flummoxed for a bit...