Linux

Years ago I posted about getting the c-cedilla (ç) working in Fedora when using the US International keyboard with deadkeys. This has been a struggle for decades now and every time I set up a new Linux installation, I need to look it up.

That wouldn’t be such a problem, weren’t for the fact that the way to accomplish this seemingly simple task keeps changing over the years, so most of the information you find online is awfully out of date.

So for 2025, based on my experience with Fedora 42 (the current version at time of writing) – I suspect it would work similarly with other distros, but I cannot confirm it – this is how I did it.

First add these two lines to /etc/environment –

export GTK_IM_MODULE=cedilla
export QT_IM_MODULE=cedillaCode language: Bash (bash)

And then in your home dir, add a file named .XCompose with this –

<dead_acute> <C>			: "Ç"	U0106 # LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA
<dead_acute> <c>			: "ç"	U0107 # LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CEDILLACode language: HTML, XML (xml)

Then reboot and it should just work. To be fair, this is the easiest it’s been for years to get this done.

As a bonus, there are a few other changes that I’ve made in my .XCompose file to solve some annoyances I have with the US-intl keyboard in Linux. When I type fast, I tend to accidentally end up with a lot of mistakenly accented consonants that I don’t need in any of the languages I write in.

These are, of course, entirely up to you if you want them and have nothing to do with the cedilla. You can find them on Github.

Hopefully the search engine gods will help someone out there find this when they need it. Might just be me in the not-too-distant future.

Quem utiliza teclado US Internacional para escrever no Linux já deve ter dado de cara com o fato de que na maioria das distribuições, a combinação ‘+c gera um “ć” em vez de um “ç”. Resolver isso no Fedora 25 é fácil, mas não evidente.

tl;dr – eu criei este script que faz todos os passos abaixo automaticamente. Basta rodar isso:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robteix/c-cedilla-fedora/master/c-cedilla-fedora | bash

Se você preferir não executar o script, continue lendo.

Primeiro, vamos criar um novo mapa de teclado para seu usuário. Rode o comando abaixo:

sed -e 's,\xc4\x86,\xc3\x87,g' \
    -e 's,\xc4\x87,\xc3\xa7,g' \
    < /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose > ~/.XCompose

Isso copia o arquivo de mapeamento de teclas do Fedora para o diretório $HOME do usuário, substituindo o “Ć” por um “Ç”.

Agora vamos configurar o GNOME para que ele não controle a configuração do teclado, para que possamos usar nossa própria:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.keyboard active false

Para selecionar o input method apropriado, o Fedora fornece um programinha chamado im-chooser que não é instalado por padrão. Para instalá-lo:

sudo dnf install im-chooser

Por fim, executamos o im-chooser e escolhemos “Use X Compose table”:

Clique em “Log out” para aplicar as modificações e a partir de agora deve ser possível gerar o c-cedilha com a combinação ‘+c.

I’ve just installed Git on a Windows 10 box using apt-get.

What a glorious time to be alive 😉

I appreciate beautiful, readable code. And if someone were to ask me for an example of beautiful code, I’ve always had the answer ready: the linked list implementation in the Linux kernel.

The code is gorgeous in its simplicity, clarity, and amazing flexibility. If there’s ever a museum for code, this belongs there. It is a masterpiece of the craft.

I was just telling a friend about it while we talked about beautiful code and he found this piece that I share here: Linux Kernel Linked List Explained.

After I recently accepted my old age, I was talking to some friends who, to their own surprise, found they were old too. We were talking about when each of us started working with Linux and a friend noticed he had been working with Linux for 10 years. That’s when I realized it’s been a decade since I was first paid to work with the operating system.

I had been using Linux for a little while. My first contact with it was in mid 1995. I had bought a computer magazine from the UK that had this pink CD-ROM with something called Linux-FT.

One of the cool things about Linux-FT was that it had a licensed copy of the Motif window manager, which was pretty cool at the time. I had been using some RISC boxes in college running CDE, so I felt right at home.

Then in 1999 I was hired to help this company migrate from Windows to Linux. It was the first time I was ever paid to do anything related to Linux.

I went to work at Conectiva the next year, where I learned I didn’t know anything. What the heck do I do now? That’s also where I learned like never before, made lots of friends, and found the love of my life. (No, not another Linux distribution! I mean my wife! What’s wrong with you?)

In 2004 I left Conectiva and started working with one of the company’s founders on another Linux project. The work itself was interesting, but it was also my first contact with something that I would see a lot more in the future: the downright dishonesty of Linux entrepreneurs in Brazil. Of course, I then thought it was an isolated thing and decided I didn’t want to be a part of that and left the company in 2005.

That’s when I came to Intel to work at the CSO, a “personal” project of Andy Grove. CSO had a simple mission: to foster Linux usage by financing and providing engineering to business with good ideas. How great is that? I was going to work on my passion (Linux) and meet all kinds of people who shared it with me. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh boy.

In the following year I’d see things that would still make me sick years later. From businesspeople to self-appointed free software leaders, all I saw was guile and greed. It was such a disappointment that I requested a change. I stopped working with Brazilian businesses and projects completely, moving to support projects in other countries. Things were much better, which is another disappointment and one of the reasons why I hold us Brazilians in such low regard as a people.

Outside Brazil things were very different and despite some funny things here and there, I am proud of the Linux work I’ve done, especially the megalarge project with the government of Venezuela. I even met Hugo Chavez, which is funny considering my political stand 🙂

Regardless, I was also getting disappointed at other things as well. After years developing projects such as KDE, I was bored to death. I started witnessing things being done on other platforms and suddenly the Linux desktop just felt stale to me. It was dull and lifeless and at the same time I was doing all these cool stuff on Windows.

Add to all that the fact that KDE started getting full of kids adding more and more useless features… and politics… ever heard the one about the moppet who decided that all KDE About boxes should contain a thank-you note to American troops worldwide? And he wasn’t even American? You know what?

Screw Linux.

I dropped it like you wouldn’t believe. And it felt good. Not having to edit configuration files to do something simple made stuff pleasant again. I was introduced to Mac OS X and I loved it. It was Linux on steroids. All the good stuff without the kludge.

No more politics. No more GNU Slash Linux. No more open source vs. free software. No revolutionary-audio-framework-of-the-month. No juvenile cockiness. No rWindoze. No Micro$oft.

Just fun.

After nearly 15 years, I’m truly free.