CAPSLOCK KEY NEVER SHOULD HAVE TAKEN UP SUCH A USEFUL SPOT ON MODERN KEYBOARDS.

inherited from mechanical keyboards

On typewriters Shift and Capslock shifted the mechanism to switch between the lower case to upper case letters. Having a large and easily accessible key for that was probably a good thing because it required more physical force and having a large and readily accessible key was good idea ... 50 years ago._

A Command Line Wizard knows the control key, on the other hand, should be much easier to access.

xremap

xremap by k0kubun is a rust based tool to remap lots of neat features beyond the CAPSLOCK issue. Take a look at that for more advanced keybinding that works across X / KDE / Wayland.

Wayland:

sudo apt install dconf-cli

dconf write \ 
      /org/gnome/desktop/input-sources/xkb-options \
      "['caps:ctrl_modifier']"`

raspberry pi

Starting in Bookworm (2023 era) the pi uses Wayland and Wayfire.

Edit: ~/.config/wayfire.ini
Find the xkb_options=
under [input] and modify to read:

xkb_options=ctrl:nocaps

Note: it is comma separated values of you want to keep/add other things.

X / Terminal

/usr/bin/setxkbmap -option "ctrl:nocaps"

Make that perminate:
/etc/default/keyboard

XKBOPTIONS="ctrl:swapcaps"

Detailed steps:

  1. sudo vi /etc/default/keyboard
    For swapping the Caps Lock with Ctrl, change to:
  2. XKBOPTIONS="ctrl:swapcaps"
    For just changing Caps Lock (and not the Ctrl key):
  3. XKBOPTIONS="ctrl:nocaps"
    To apply the new configuration:
  4. sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration