I’m hijacking the thread, but does anyone know if a Linux utility that replicates OS X’s ability to enter special characters with option? For instance on a QWERTY keyboard, you can type option-backtick followed by `e` and it will combine it into `è`. There are several other combinations I forget to enter other Unicode chars that don’t have a key and that feature works systemwide. It’s the one thing I miss on Linux from OS X.
You need to set your keyboard layout. Assuming you have some desktop environment, look in its keyboard settings for “English (Macintosh)”. You may also have to configure an AltGraph key (== Option); the default is likely right Alt, since that's what Windows does.
