Localization/Changing Keyboard Layout

From OLPC

[edit] Changing the keyboard configuration file

The keyboard layout settings in an XO is stored in the file /etc/sysconfig/keyboard. The easiest way to change the keyboard layout is to edit this file. However, please note that any OS upgrade will reset the keyboard configuration back to the original edition.

[edit] Understanding the contents of the the /etc/sysconfig/keyboard file

A typical keyboard configuration file looks like

KEYTABLE="us"
XKB_MODEL="olpc"
XKB_LAYOUT="us"
XKB_VARIANT="olpc"

Typically the values of XKB_LAYOUT and XKB_VARIANT need to be changed, the other two variables can be left as is. The value of XKB_LAYOUT signifies the layout to be used, by convention it is usually country specific (eg: us, tr, mn, in, etc). The XKB_VARIANT value indicates the variant to be used, eg: the "us" keyboard may have a qwerty variant, and a dvorak variant.

[edit] Choosing the right values for XKB_LAYOUT and XKB_VARIANT

The list of keyboards that are supported (or are in the process of being supported) are listed at the Manufacturing Data page. For each layout, there is a corresponding value in the KL and KV columns. The KL value should go in XKB_LAYOUT, and the KV value should go in XKB_VARIANT. For example, for the Mongolian Keyboard, the /etc/sysconfig/keyboard looks like

KEYTABLE="us"
XKB_MODEL="olpc"
XKB_LAYOUT="us,mn"
XKB_VARIANT="olpc2,olpc"

[edit] Activating the new keyboard layout

Once the requisite changes are made to /etc/sysconfig/keyboard, a restart of sugar with the ctrl-alt-erase keypress should activate the new keyboard layout. Before restarting sugar, all activities must be stopped.