Swap Ctrl/Caps Lock not working in VirtualBox 4.3.16 -> intentional change

[HStovring]

Until now my keyboard mapping in Kubuntu 14.04 has worked seamlessly in the guest OS of Windows 7, which I run in VirtualBox. But after the upgrade to VirtualBox version 4.3.16 r95972 the swapping of Ctrl & Caps Lock is not respected. Any ideas for fixing this - or is it a known bug in the new VirtualBox version?

Thanks!

-HStovring

[Michael Thayer]

I'm afraid that it was a decision (not one that we publicised, simply because I suspect that it only affects a few "specialist" users). Previously we did support this as a departure from our normal policy that the keyboard must be fully configured in the guest independently of the host settings. As we had quite a bit of additional code complexity for this which made me somewhat uneasy I removed it while looking at a bug report related to that code. I understand that it is an inconvenience, but for me (as the code maintainer) keeping the code simple has a higher priority.

Incidentally this also makes X11-based hosts consistent with Windows and OS X.

Sorry again for the annoyance.

[unixuser]

This affects me as well. I understand some people will prefer the new behaviour, but, for me, this is a bit annoying. Setting the keyboard layout is perhaps simpler in many systems, but swapping ctrl and caps lock can get a bit trickier. Multiply this by four, five virtual machines, running different operating systems and user interfaces.

I frequently add new virtual machines for, e.g. school assignments, projects, actual paid work, in a computer where I have swapped Ctrl and Caps Lock. Not only is this a bit unintuitive for me (if I already changed it once, why do I have to do the change twice, thrice, ...?), but it also gets a bit tedious and cumbersome. For example, for each GNU/Linux system, I have to do this configuration at least twice, because the keymaps for X11 and the text console are configured separately.

If there is any chance to get some option to switch between "keyboard has to be configured in the guest machine" and "respect the layout and mappings in the host system", I'd consider it a valuable feature.