Changing keyboard layouts also sounds annoying considering it’s not like i’m entering accents everyday
On windows it was like ctrl + alt + numpad 1 + . for accents or something, no compose key required
The compose key isn’t a key that you might have on your keyboard, it’s achieved by binding an existing key to be the compose key instead of its usual functionality.
E.g. I never use Caps Lock, so I have bound it to be the compose key, by creating the file
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-keyboard.conf
with the following content:Section "InputClass" Identifier "keyboard-all" Driver "evdev" Option "XkbLayout" "us" Option "XkbOptions" "compose:caps" MatchIsKeyboard "on" EndSection
If you use a desktop environment like GNOME, there’s no need to edit config files like this, you can also do it graphically via the Gnome Tweaks application, see here for instructions: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/tips-specialchars.html.en#compose
In the Settings application, go to Keyboard and there you can configure which key is the compose key, as well as add keyboard layouts and set keyboard shortcuts for lots of things (including rotating through your configured keyboard layouts).
thanks!