First of all - Dennis’s advice is great. I just opened up a Librem 13v2 and I was able to sort this strange / new issue to me out much faster thanks. This is a pretty good workaround.
I am wondering if there might be some way to fix this quirk on a lower level. Is it possible to change the scan code coming from the keyboard in coreboot? Or perhaps update the keyboard firmware if that is possible.
I made a couple observations while digging in to this issue.
- This issue occurs in Debian Stretch and PureOS (in addition to Fedora 26 and 27 as other users reported).
- GRUB2 detects the key as a normal \ | key
Is it possible that the keyboard on my laptop has a UK firmware or something strange going on in it?
I’d like to actually correct the scancode if possible, because this will help fixing the keyboard on other operating systems and in cryptsetup or busybox before a full boot.
I might figure out how to get the setkeycodes command to run as part of initrd but I’m curious if anybody has ideas on what is possible (or might be odd) on a lower level.