Hello, this is my first post on this forum, let me know if I forgot to add any information you need.
I am a relatively beginner user (I migrated from Mint KDE to here), so please be patient if I don’t get everything instantly.
I have set my keyboard language to be french, and system language/locale to US ENG.
Everytime I reboot, my keyboard switches back to english so I have to open yast to change it. I noticed some other things also don’t get saved between reboots - for example if I right click on a device in dolphin, and chose "Hide ‘device’ ", next reboot it will appear again.
What causes this? how can I solve it?
It is a fresh install. DE is of course KDE, if it matters.
Depends on who manages to be the first to answer . . . >:)
This is a nice example of how Linux (and UNIX® in general) handles languages and locales within the various system levels.
At the “system” level (everything below the user {usually GUI} level), the content of “/etc/sysconfig/” determines the locale/language/keyboard settings.
Within YaST there are four things to do:
Set-up the system language;
Set-up the system locale (where the system is located on the planet Earth);
Set-up the system keyboard layout;
Ensure that the boot-loader has been re-written after the above system configuration has been saved.
After that, the individual users need to set-up their “~/.profile” files: (for example, my personal settings):
# Most applications support several languages for their output.
# To make use of this feature, simply uncomment one of the lines below or
# add your own one (see /usr/share/locale/locale.alias for more codes)
# This overwrites the system default set in /etc/sysconfig/language
# in the variable RC_LANG.
#
export LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 # uncomment this line for German output
#export LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 # uncomment this line for French output
#export LANG=es_ES.UTF-8 # uncomment this line for Spanish output
[HR][/HR]One more point (if the YaST “System Keyboard” module no longer offers a list of possible keyboards):
In /etc/sysconfig/keyboard
set both KEYTABLE and YAST_KEYBOARD to the empty string: “”
How bootloader is related to system locale at all?
After that, the individual users need to set-up their “~/.profile” files
user does not need. Every user inherits system-wide settings by default. But specific DE may not use default X server keyboard setup; this is the case with GNOME where keyboard must be configured for each user separately. Could be the case with KDE as well.
thanks a lot for your reply and your explanations.
Unfortunately, you focus too much on just the keyboard problem. the real problem is not just the keyboard settings not saving, it’s a lot of settings/changes not saving (some examples, I haven’t tested everything yet, it’s just those I found:* wallpapers, keyboard language, right/desktop settings/layout/folder type, *right/desktop settings/tweaks/show the desktop toolbox. today, right click/hide device works in dolphin and the hidden devices don’t seem to reappear after rebooting, but yesterday it didn’t work either).
I don’t think I am supposed to manually write into config files each of these settings every time I do a change, it was automated in Mint KDE (and Ubuntu), so I assume it is in Suse as well, and according to arvidjaar, it is in Suse.
so, rather than treating each symptom one by one, maybe it’d be easier to find where the big problem is. I have no idea where to look though.
I am using OpenSuse LEAP 42.1, with KDE5 DE. Fresh install, with only updates done.
Think you miss the point In Linux there are different roles for you to play. There are system settings and user setting. system settings are the default but can be overloaded by user settings. Remember Linux is multi-user which means all can have there own preferences. So each user must set their own preferences in the GUI they use. How depends on the GUI
KDE most things are in Configure Desktop. Yast is used for system setting Configure Desktop for user settings
Since all settings are actually in text configuration files it is often easier to give text editing instruction that can be copy and pasted then complex GUI instructions.In almost all cases there is a GUI equivalent.
thanks to your post, I did manage to find where to set the default language for the keyboard is (configure desktop/input device/keyboard/layout/configure layout - I’d have noticed it right away if at least there was an entry in it for english).
I do find it very weird that during the installation, they asked me which layout I wanted to use, only to override it with the default english one after the installation is done (it’s not even like yast/Suse forgot about my choice, when I changed the layout via yast, french was automatically highlighted instead of another language.)
Either way, thanks a lot for helping with this one, but that’s not the main problem I was facing. lots of other settings still refuse to persist after reboot.
The difficulty with answering, is that we do not know what you are doing.
What sort of system is this? How did you install? I ask, because it is normal when running from live media, for settings changes to not be permanently saved. The standard install DVD for 42.1 is not a live medium, so if you installed that way you should not be having the problems that you describe. However, there are some unofficial live media on the net. We do not know what you used.
We need more details on what you are doing that isn’t saved.
Maybe grub is stuck on booting to a rollback snapshot with “btrfs”. Unlikely, but your posts lack sufficient information for us to be able to tell.
I suggest that you pick one particular setting that is giving problems. Then describe exactly what you are doing. I think you will get better responses that way.
I usually use a German language Desktop and therefore the explanations regarding where to find things may be unclear.
However I’m answering this issue from a “very British” user account (login):
Using “very British” English, in the KDE Application Menu (usually the bottom-left “toothed-wheel with a K” icon) there’s an application named “System Settings” (which is actually deals mainly with user settings but, I’m not about to declare war with the KDE folks to try and resolve that issue!) and, within that application there’s a region named “Personalisation” and, within that set there’s a thing named “Regional Settings” with the following sections:
Translations;
Formats;
Spell Check;
Date & Time.
Each user can individually set their KDE GUI regional preferences.
There’s also a region named “Hardware” with a set member named “Input Devices” containing a thing named “Keyboard Hardware and Layout” with 16 different French keyboard layouts.
[HR][/HR]Assuming that, the user has the right to write things into their home directory and all the sub-directories below the home directory, there is no reason why the settings can not be saved by means of the “Apply” button bottom right of each and every “System Settings” “thing”.
[HR][/HR]Could be that I need to change this user to the French language and repost what I’ve written above with the French language terms.
I’m not aware of any “big problem”: within Linux and UNIX® if the system locale is set to “somewhere on the planet Earth” then, the language and hardware (keyboard) layouts are set to the default for that place on the planet Earth. If however, you’re in France and, you set the system locale to the United States of America then, you’ll have to at least change the following settings:
Keyboard layout;
Language;
Time Zone.
[HR][/HR]I’ll post again in a minute or two, after changing this user account to the French language.
Back again, now with a French language user account – didn’t change ~/.profile – only the KDE Plasma 5 “System Settings”.
Firefox is now French language (must admit that I had the French language as one of the alternatives but, I didn’t touch anything in the Browser settings – honest Guv, it didn’t break . . .
The KDE Starter is now “Menu des applications”.
The “System settings” is now “Configuration du système”.
The region “Personalisation” is now “Personnalisation” and the “Regional Settings” is now “Paramètres régionaux” with “Traductions”, “Formats”, “Vérification orthographique” and “Date et heure”
The region “Hardware” is now “Matériel” and “Input Devices” is now “Périphériques d’entrée”.
[HR][/HR]Bottom line: the language change only occurs after a logout/login cycle – therefore, the settings have been written to the user’s home directory.
And, if the user’s home directory cannot be written, then the changes of the “locale / language / keyboard layout” settings will not survive the logout/login cycle nor, a system reboot …