Factorio Forums

Hello,

I have recently switched from Windows to Linux.
Today I have noticed while playing Factorio that I was not able to open the chat with the "^" Key (which is the standard key-bind on the German keyboard).
When looking into the settings I noticed the Chat Key is bound to "KEY_53" which certainly doesn't look right, I wanted to rebind it to the proper key "^", but I was not able to the game just ignores it when I press the Key.

My distro is POP OS idk if that matters.
Here a Picture of the Key-bind Menu

The ^ key has some special behaviour in some keyboard layouts, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_key.
For me ^ works if I choose the keyboard layout "German". If I use the keyboard layout "German (with deadkeys)" I see the bug that you describe. So it looks like you're using a keyboard layout that makes ^ into a dead key, which causes it to break in Factorio.

I know that Windows treats ^ as a dead key but it still works for chat in Factorio. So I'm keeping this in bug reports for now, maybe there is some way for us to make dead keys work on Linux too. But I would recommend you to switch to a keyboard layout that doesn't treat ^ as a dead key.

I just did a quick test on Linux Mint with Cinnamon and can confirm what Bilka said.
When using layout "German" (which has the ^ key as dead key) the key seems to be ignored by Factorio.
When using "German (no dead keys)" layout, it works in Factorio as expected.
At a glance I don't see a simple/easy solution, so I would suggest using "no dead keys" layout or changing the chat key bind.
I might revisit this at some later point because I find it interesting.