I just upgraded my workstation to Jaunty (Ubuntu 9.04) and the key repeat delay and speed dropped to a frustrating level.

gnome-control-center can be used to fix this, but it requires that the gnome-settings-daemon be running, which forces it’s opinions on many other aspects of my environment (I run Enlightenment dr17).

Poking around a bit, and help from #e on freenode, revealed that xset can be used to fix the key repeat settings.

[cc lang=”bash”]

Look at the current settings:

$ xset q Keyboard Control: auto repeat: on key click percent: 0 LED mask: 00000000 auto repeat delay: 660 repeat rate: 25 auto repeating keys: 00ffffffdffffbbf

                    fadfffefffedffff
                    9fffffffffffffff
                    fff7ffffffffffff

lets speed things up a bit…

$ xset r rate 250 40 [/cc]