Permanent xmodmap in Ubuntu 13.04

Ubuntu no longer uses xmodmap, but instead uses xkb (as far as I understand, this facilitates per-window keyboard layouts, among other things).

The system-wide map files are in

/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/

The maps appears to be loaded hierarchically, with the pc map as the root, and whatever language (e.g. en) as a child of the root.

In my particular case, I physically swapped Page Up with Home and Page Down with End on my keyboard, so I very crudely made changes to the system-wide pc map, as follows:

 key <HOME> {    [  Prior        ]   };
 key <PGUP> {    [  Home         ]   };
 key  <END> {    [  Next         ]   };
 key <PGDN> {    [  End          ]   };

NOTE: To force Xorg to use your new keyboard map, you may have to remove the existing pre-compiled maps (*.xkm) in

/var/lib/xkb/

and then restart Xorg.

There are various resources on xkb, but this one is related to Ubuntu.

For me, the xkb configuration is too complicated if you want to remap 1 or 2 keys in a way not available in the System Settings. Plus, the solution should remain on the user side, without editing '/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/' etc. Force the 'xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap' load using the Startup Applications only works until you suspend, change users or change the keyboard layout. So, as holocronweaver suggests, with code snippets I found, I made a python script to be loaded on session startup, that reloads the '~/.Xmodmap' when needed.

Check the bug report #1243642 (comment #6), and download it here.

I had this problem in Ubuntu 14.04, and found the solution here. Apparently, Ubuntu is not able to configure the keyboard right away after logging in, but it is a bit later. So if you add a command

sleep 4 && xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap &

to ~/.bash_profile then it should work (it does for me).

EDIT: This seems to work only after logging in, not after starting up. I'll have to investigate this later.