How to change keyboard layout without a DE?

According to the keyboard layout wiki, keyboard configurations (for both the console and Xorg) can be conveniently set using the localectl command.

In order to set a second keyboard layout, we have to dig into the manual page. There it is stated that a second layout (for the console) can be set up by specifying a "toggle keymap". Concretely, you can set a second keyboard layout for your console:

localectl set-keymap KEYMAP1 KEYMAP2

This will also set KEYMAP1 as the Xorg layout.

If you only need multiple keyboard layouts in your GUI, it should suffice to set the Xorg keymap using a comma-separated list of layouts using

localectl set-x11-keymap KEYMAP1,KEYMAP2

Additional arguments can be used to specify models and/or variants. See the xorg keyboard wiki for further details. This will also set KEYMAP1 as the console layout.

Note that if you want to have both, you will have to use both localectl commands and specify --no-convert for the second command. Otherwise, the settings from the first command will be overwritten.

posted 9 months ago

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mr Tsjolder‭

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