Show keys pressed in Linux

Others have mentioned , which is good when you're running X11. When you're at the console, however, is what you want. And if you’re at an SSH session or a real terminal, you can use (available in Debian in the ncurses-examples package). Note that xev for "a" gives 38, while showkey for "a" gives 30, because xev reports scancodes, whereas showkey by default reports keycodes.