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I have upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.04 and I encountered a strange problem with my keyboard.

While I am typing sometimes the last character I typed sticks, so it acts like I keep holding the the key down without releasing it.

For example if I typed "Ubuntu" the last "u" could stick and would be producing "Ubuntuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" until I pressed any key on the keyboard. This happens randomly and I can't figure out under which circumstances this happens. I have never experienced it on Ubuntu 10.04, so I doubt that this is something wrong with my hardware.

N.N.
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Maxim
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    trust me - I'm not being funny - but obviously - you have turned your keyboard over and given it a good shake ? :) – fossfreedom Aug 26 '11 at 16:00
  • Your English is all OK. – N.N. Aug 26 '11 at 16:10
  • @fossfreedom It's definitely Ubuntu bug. You can google for it and see that other people had similar problem. When I boot Windows then everything works without any keyboard glitches. But when I use Ubuntu 11.04 keys may stick sporadically several times a day. Trust me my keyboard is fine ;) – Maxim Aug 27 '11 at 16:31

1 Answers1

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Since there are now two related posts on this I'm guessing it's a bug. A simple workaround would be to turn off repeated key presses.

  1. Click the icon at the very right of the top panel and select System Settings.
  2. In the Hardware section, click Keyboard.
  3. On the General tab, turn off Key presses repeat when key is held down to disable repeated keys entirely. Alternatively, adjust the Delay slider to control how long you have to hold a key down to begin repeating it, and adjust the Speed slider to control how quickly key presses repeat.

(via Official Ubuntu Help Documentation.)

Community
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trench
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  • Thank you. It seems to work. I will mark your answer as accepted if I won't experience this keyboard glitches during following 2-3 days. – Maxim Sep 01 '11 at 13:10
  • Your welcome. It should work. What's weird is, I can't think of a personal example as to why I would want this feature on by default. The only time I hold down a key press and expect it to be repeated is when I'm humorously emphasizing things with multiple exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!1 I never hold down a key to make it repeat for any legitimate reasons. Perhaps Ubuntu needs to rethink having this enabled by default. – trench Sep 01 '11 at 17:01
  • While this might be a workaround, it doesn't address the fact that there's is some underlying bug -- most likely an IRQ problem -- that causes the key to stick. It's also an annoying work around, as then things as simple as holding down an error key to navigate text is broken. – Ken Kinder Aug 23 '13 at 20:12