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hacksenwerk

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2022-02-10

Posts: 24  

[HowTo] European keyboard layout

The european keyboard layout is based on the us keyboard layout, but with the possibility to also type nearly all characters from nearly all european languages, wich diverge from the us keyboard layout.

You can check out the layout here:
https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/layout.html
Click on the tabs to see what inputs are possible (needs javascript enabled).

Note:
The developers of EurKEY wrote, that their program is included in xkeyboard-config 2.12 and newer.
You can find that note here:
https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/download.html#tab1
As far as I understand that is the source and the binary package for apt is: xkb-data.
On both computers where I tested the following configuration that package is installed.

# Setting up the eu keyboard layout under Devuan 5.0.1

## Set it up for the Xserver only
Simply run:
setxkbmap eu

## Set it up for the tty

1.
In
/etc/default/keyboard
set
XKBLAYOUT="eu"

2.
Check locales with
locale

2a.
If it does not show
en_US.UTF-8
change that by running
dpkg-reconfigure locales
and choose
en_US.UTF-8

3.
After that run
dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
and choose
Generic 105-key PC

3a.
In the next screen it will ask:
"Keep current keyboard layout in the configuration file?"
choose
Yes

3b.
In the third screen it will ask for
Key to function as AltGr:
choose
Right Alt (AltGr)

3c.
And in the last screen it will ask for
Compose key
choose
No compose key

4.
Then reboot.

Please report it here if that guide does not work for you or when you could get it to work with a different method. :)

Last edited by hacksenwerk (2025-02-23 17:30:21)

hacksenwerk

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2022-02-10

Posts: 24  

Re: [HowTo] European keyboard layout

On my productive system I got the following messages after the reboot:

CHKBOOT ALERT!

Changes have been detected in your boot files!
The following list of files contained in have changed since the last time this script was run (filename sha512):
List of changed files on date_and_time_here:

338c338
< ./grub/grub.cfg foobar_with_a_lot_of_numbers
---
> ./grub/grub.cfg foobar_with_a_lot_of_numbers

This notification will continue to appear until you either run "chkboot" again as root or restart your computer

I then log in as root and runned chkboot.
After that the message not pop up when i changed the tty.

The next day i rebooted the computer and the eu layout was gone on the tty.
I runned the process again and after a reboot I did not get that "CHKBOOT ALERT" and eu was working again.

Any clues?

Next problem: the eu layout is not active in the decryption screen before boot. Hot to fix that?

(This How To! changed to a How To? as it seems :/)

hacksenwerk

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2022-02-10

Posts: 24  

Re: [HowTo] European keyboard layout

Update:
Today I removed plymouth from the computer.
After that grub and intiramfs were updated.
I did a reboot.
Since then the layout is eu everywhere, also in the decryption screen.
So of course the issue I described has (probably) nothing to do with plymouth, but with the initramfs and grub.
So updating them after running the steps in the first post should keep those settings permanently.

Last edited by hacksenwerk (2025-02-26 10:09:41)