Re: How can we change the keyboard layout?

From	hw <hw@adminart.net>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.user
Subject	Re: How can we change the keyboard layout?
Date	2024-02-06 00:20 +0100
Message-ID	<I4gpP-89UC-1@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
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On Mon, 2024-02-05 at 20:59 +0000, Michael Kjörling wrote:
> On 5 Feb 2024 21:06 +0100, from hw@adminart.net (hw):
> > [...]
> > --- and then I need to be able to change the keyboard layout in
> > wayland sessions unless I use an US keyboard.  But I only have one
> > of those.
> 
> Pretty sure /etc/default/keyboard has been a thing on Debian for just
> about forever. I haven't dug into the details but it seems to date
> back to 2006 which would put its first appearance at circa Sarge or
> Etch (3.1/mid-2005 or 4.0/early-2007 respectively); possibly even
> earlier, but that's as far back as the console-setup package history
> goes.

Yeah it was an issue back then, and how do you know that there's such
a thing as /etc/default/keyboard and what it means.  Try to get a
German Model M keyboard to work right with Xorg in, for example, 2010.

It starts with the question 'How many keys does it have?' and soon the
question is 'How do I turn CapsLock into Ctrl?' and 'How do I put that
into xorg.conf?' --- which eventually was omitted, so you had to bring
that back, and that even in snippets, to get it to work.  Ugh ...

Even fvwm kinda never got it right because stuff would change in some
ideosyncratic, unexpected way depending on if NumLock was on or off.
So don't you dare to turn that off --- and for almost 30 years we had
to manually switch on NumLock every time we started an X11 session and
if we were to switch to a console, we had to turn it on again and then
do something because it was screwed up after switching back (or the
other way round).

How can it be so difficult to get basic things like that right?  It
still sucks because after more then 30 years, we still don't have a
good way to change the keyboard layouts!

> The one on my Bookworm system even has a comment right there on how to
> use an entirely custom keymap, and that's also mentioned in the
> keyboard(5) man page.

"In Debian systems the default keyboard layout is described in
 /etc/default/keyboard and it is shared between X and the
 console."

Xorg doesn't seem to be maintained anymore and is on the way out.

So how do you change the keyboard layout when using wayland?

Thread

what keyboard do you use? Lee <ler762@gmail.com> - 2024-02-03 02:30 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Gremlin <scott-andrews@columbus.rr.com> - 2024-02-03 02:50 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? Timothy M Butterworth <timothy.m.butterworth@gmail.com> - 2024-02-03 04:00 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? ghe2001 <ghe2001@protonmail.com> - 2024-02-03 03:00 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2024-02-03 03:10 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> - 2024-02-03 08:40 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? Lee <ler762@gmail.com> - 2024-02-03 15:40 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-04 11:30 +0100
      Re: what keyboard do you use? Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> - 2024-02-04 17:30 +0100
      Re: what keyboard do you use? Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2024-02-04 18:40 +0100
        Re: what keyboard do you use? Michael Kjörling <2695bd53d63c@ewoof.net> - 2024-02-04 19:00 +0100
          Re: what keyboard do you use? Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2024-02-04 19:10 +0100
            Re: what keyboard do you use? Michael Kjörling <2695bd53d63c@ewoof.net> - 2024-02-04 19:30 +0100
              Re: what keyboard do you use? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-05 12:40 +0100
                Re: what keyboard do you use? "Loris Bennett" <loris.bennett@fu-berlin.de> - 2024-02-05 15:50 +0100
                How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard do you  use?) hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-05 21:10 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard do  you use?) Ralph Aichinger <ra@h5.or.at> - 2024-02-05 21:40 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard do  you use?) David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-02-05 21:40 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard do  you use?) hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-05 23:50 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard do  you use?) debian-user@howorth.org.uk - 2024-02-06 12:30 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard do  you use?) hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 15:10 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? Michael Kjörling <2695bd53d63c@ewoof.net> - 2024-02-05 22:10 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 00:20 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-02-06 05:30 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-02-06 05:50 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-02-06 06:30 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-02-06 06:40 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-02-06 15:20 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 11:30 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-02-07 04:50 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-07 07:00 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-02-07 13:20 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? John Hasler <john@sugarbit.com> - 2024-02-07 14:40 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-13 08:20 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-02-21 20:00 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-21 23:20 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-02-26 04:30 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? Michael Kjörling <2695bd53d63c@ewoof.net> - 2024-02-06 10:20 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 11:40 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-02-06 11:50 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-02-06 04:20 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard do  you use?) Brian Sammon <debian-users-list@brisammon.fastmail.fm> - 2024-02-06 07:40 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard do  you use?) debian-user@howorth.org.uk - 2024-02-06 13:10 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard do  you use?) hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 14:00 +0100
                solved: How can we change the keyboard layout? (was: what keyboard  do you use?) hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 16:00 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? "Loris Bennett" <loris.bennett@fu-berlin.de> - 2024-02-06 11:20 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2024-02-06 12:00 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 12:50 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? Ralph Aichinger <ra@h5.or.at> - 2024-02-06 13:30 +0100
                Of German keycap translations [was: How can we change the keyboard  layout?] <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-02-06 13:40 +0100
                Re: Of German keycap translations [was: How can we change the  keyboard layout?] hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 14:50 +0100
                Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 14:40 +0100
                [OT] (I guess) Re: How can we change the keyboard layout? Michael Lange <klappnase@t-online.de> - 2024-02-07 00:00 +0100
                Re: what keyboard do you use? Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-02-06 05:20 +0100
                Re: what keyboard do you use? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 12:10 +0100
                Re: what keyboard do you use? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-02-06 13:20 +0100
          Re: what keyboard do you use? "James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@touchtonecorp.com> - 2024-02-05 18:10 +0100
        Re: what keyboard do you use? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-05 12:30 +0100
          Re: what keyboard do you use? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2024-02-05 15:10 +0100
            Re: what keyboard do you use? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-05 21:50 +0100
              On graphical environments [was: what keyboard do you use?] <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-02-06 06:40 +0100
                Re: On graphical environments [was: what keyboard do you use?] hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-06 15:00 +0100
                Re: On graphical environments [was: what keyboard do you use?] <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-02-06 15:10 +0100
              Re: what keyboard do you use? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2024-02-06 15:10 +0100
      Re: what keyboard do you use? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2024-02-04 18:40 +0100
        Re: what keyboard do you use? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-05 12:10 +0100
          Re: what keyboard do you use? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2024-02-05 15:10 +0100
            Re: what keyboard do you use? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-05 20:40 +0100
              Re: what keyboard do you use? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2024-02-06 15:10 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2024-02-03 05:00 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Ralph Aichinger <ra@h5.or.at> - 2024-02-03 05:00 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? Lee <ler762@gmail.com> - 2024-02-03 16:00 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-02-03 05:50 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2024-02-03 06:20 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? jeremy ardley <jeremy.ardley@gmail.com> - 2024-02-03 07:00 +0100
      Re: what keyboard do you use? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2024-02-03 13:30 +0100
      Re: what keyboard do you use? Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2024-02-03 13:40 +0100
        Re: what keyboard do you use? Jörg-Volker Peetz <jvpeetz@web.de> - 2024-02-03 15:50 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2024-02-03 06:50 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? "James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@touchtonecorp.com> - 2024-02-05 17:50 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> - 2024-02-03 08:40 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? Michael Kjörling <2695bd53d63c@ewoof.net> - 2024-02-03 15:50 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> - 2024-02-03 14:50 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Lee <ler762@gmail.com> - 2024-02-03 15:20 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? "Russell L. Harris" <russell@rlharris.org> - 2024-02-03 17:20 +0100
      Re: what keyboard do you use? Roger Price <debian@rogerprice.org> - 2024-02-03 18:40 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-04 12:20 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@debian-user.mail.kapsi.fi> - 2024-02-04 22:30 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Henrik Morsing <henrik@morsing.cc> - 2024-02-05 12:40 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2024-02-05 13:30 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Peter Ehlert <pb21a@sdi-baja.com> - 2024-02-05 16:20 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? Ash Joubert <ash@transient.nz> - 2024-02-06 00:20 +0100
      Re: what keyboard do you use? Peter Ehlert <pb21a@sdi-baja.com> - 2024-02-06 01:50 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? "James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@touchtonecorp.com> - 2024-02-05 17:50 +0100
    Re: what keyboard do you use? hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-02-05 22:30 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> - 2024-02-05 23:30 +0100
  Re: what keyboard do you use? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-02-06 05:30 +0100

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