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I'm trying to put in an email the temperature outside in degrees. On my Mac, the degree symbol (°) is Option+Shift+8. But I'm writing the email in Thunderbird on an Ubuntu 10.10 with the default US English keyboard layout. What key combination do I use to get the degree symbol under X11?

EDIT: Gert successfully answered the question... but, bonus points for any easier to use keystroke than what's in his answer!

Set up a Compose key. On Ubuntu, this is easily done in the keyboard preferences, “Layout” tab, “Options” subdialog. Caps Lock is a good choice as it's pretty much useless (all remotely serious editors have a command to make the selection uppercase for the rare times it's needed).

Press Compose followed by two characters (occasionally three) to enter a character you don't have on your keyboard. Usually the resulting character combines the two characters you type, for example Compose ' a enters á and Compose s s enters ß. The degree symbol ° is one of the less memorable combinations, it's on Compose o o.

Ctrl + Shift + u (this will show an underlined u) and then the unicode value (in this case B0) and follow it by an enter.

You can also use Alt Gr+Shift+0.

ALT+0 works for me (I'm using Gentoo Linux).

As a follow-up to @Gert's answer (since I cannot comment yet), I've found a slightly different method is required when using Raspbian Jessie:

with Ctrl and Shift held down, type u B 0 and then release all keys.

You can find the way to display any symbol using xmodmap:

sh$ xmodmap -pke | grep degre
keycode 19 = 0 parenright agrave 0 braceright degree at degree
# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

For each keycode, it shows what symbol is associated depending on the modifiers:

1. no modifier


2. Shift+Key


3. mode_switch+Key


4. mode_switch+Shift+Key


5. AltGr+Key


6. AltGr+Shift+Key


7. ???


8. ???

In that example, I can see "degree" is in 6th position and the plain key (position 1) is 0. So I can obtain the degree by pressing AltGr+Shift+0 in that order: depending on your configuration, if you press Shift first, Shift+AltGr is understood as an emulation of the Meta key which has different bindings.

hold down 'alt' key and while holding it down, hold down the 'shift' key too. and while holding down both of those, hold down the 'u' key. now, release all three. a 'u' with an underscore should appear. now press and release the 'b' key and then press and release the '0' (zero) key. now, press the 'enter' key. a '°' should appear.