In order to get greater than and less than signs without using the retarded French keyboard layout for those keys, remap keys using xmodmap. For help and testing xev can show you what is being typed.

Place the following inside ~/.bashrc to have it run whenever you login.

xmodmap -e "keysym a = a A ae AE less less"
xmodmap -e "keysym z = z Z guillemotleft less greater greater"
xmodmap -e "keysym semicolon = period semicolon horizconnector multiply horizconnector multiply"
xmodmap -e "keysym ugrave = percent percent percent percent percent percent"

The order of the letters after the = sign signify the modifiers to the keypress. The first is without modifier (natural key press of 'a'. Second is with Shift. Third and fourth is after a Mode_Switch (in RedHat Linux that is pressing Shift_R + Alt_R simultaneous, in that order) but without modifier after switching modes. And the last two is with Alt_R and Alt_R + Shift_R modifiers.


To see what currently is mapped use

xmodmap -pke | less