I doubt that it matters if a distro “uses” xmodmap or not.
Nothing prevents you from using it.
At the end of the day you’re modifying X’s mod map (hence the name) and unless and until they do away with X (that’s coming but it’s not here yet) it should absolutely work.
It can be a bit tricky but not too tricky if you google it and try things out. You can run it when you log into your X session and it should do whatever you need it to do.
“But why do some distros not even provide the location via right click menu on an icon in the start menu, or a create shortcut and Send to desktop option from within folders, with the ability to assign keyboard keys to launch it right there, as under Windows?”
Well that’s like saying why isn’t such and such like something else. At some point you have to be good with the fact that things won’t be like windoze.
Some things are must haves - you need to be able to see and manipulate files, processes, configurations, listen to audio, see video etc. etc. etc.
How you do certain things - those things shouldn’t be precisely the same - or in linux you have the maximum freedom to change things round to suit your likes. But it ain’t always easy - you to a) love it and b) be somewhat good at it.
I have been down the should work, or may work routine before, but as seen by others i founds nothing that did work with CapsLock to ctrl+c at least.
You may see some of the responses to my requests here .
I asked Ask Ubuntu here a while back, but no replies.
This reply says,
The solution to the xmodmap slowness (and bugginess, since its remappings are glitchy and non-persistent in desktop environments that use layout switching) would be to define an entirely new keyboard layout based off of whatever layout you were previously using, rather than applying runtime modifications. On X startup, you'd load that new, remapped layout instead of whatever you're using now. (It seems this is now the only way to reliably modify the keyboard layout in recent Ubuntus — and possibly other distros — as their xmodmap is no longer useful.)
< Another says,
There isn't a way to produce a keypress event based on the state of a locked key like that. There are a few reasons for that, but as a counter example, what happens if you copy something, then later want to copy something else without pasting? You select something in your editor, press Caps Lock, and rather than copying, which is your intent, it pastes the previously copied buffer, deleting your selected text. Hope you can undo!
I believe there's also no way in XKB to have a single keypress produce Ctrl-C, but there are a few tools to do just that. Generally speaking, XKB works really well and is very versatile, but if you want something more custom than what it provides, it tends to make your life difficult. Or at least it used to, last time I tried.. - http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/39497/how-do-i-remap-my-caps-lock-key-to-ctrlx-within-x-org
There are more possible solutions, but learning how and trying each varied suggestion is something that need to be put on the backburner for now.
Thanks for taking an interest.