I was trying Dawnmist's SDL version of Angband (3.1.2). It was so beautiful, but I found it a bit cumbersome to do ESC by pressing "Ctrl-e" because my right thumb has to go over to the left to reach "e" while the left one is holding Ctrl. After some trials I managed to change the macro to backspace. It should be a safe option because it is originally mapped to "<", which duplicates the macro of Ctrl-left.
The process is decribed in http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...3052#post43052 .
It's a bit complicated. You may save the trouble by using the attached User.prf. Unzip it to /home/user/.angband/Angband/ before running the game.