Keyboard Mysteries

[cvmiller]

I cannot find which keyboard layout should be chosen to enable the left-bottom most key (\ and |) to be properly mapped (default US layout leads to generate < and >).
Using the function key to get these chars is not really handy.

You can use xmodmap to set the backslash key up properly

# remap Pipe Key to Pipe
xmodmap -e "keycode 94 = backslash bar backslash bar"

Put that in your .bashrc to have it set for you the next time you log in.