Puzzling Keyboard

English Applications
1

A friend’s computer runs the same OS and uses the same locale:

erlangen:~ # hostnamectl 
   Static hostname: erlangen
         Icon name: computer-desktop
           Chassis: desktop
          Location: home
        Machine ID: 94f3af277bac4a8eb57da425c9677379
           Boot ID: b154b429b7f04ef09084b7b80d910535
  Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed
       CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:opensuse:tumbleweed:20201114
            Kernel: Linux 5.9.1-2-default
      Architecture: x86-64
erlangen:~ # localectl 
   System Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: de-latin1-nodeadkeys
      X11 Layout: de
       X11 Model: pc105
     X11 Variant: nodeadkeys
     X11 Options: terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
erlangen:~ #

However in the graphical login the friend gets an US keyboard. Switching the screen by typing Ctrl+Alt+F1 and then switching back by typing Ctrl+Alt+F7 fixes the issue resulting in a German keyboard. Any idea how to fix this annoyance?

2

A closer look at the machine revealed it got some 10 zypper dups during the last 3 years. All worked fine, but the last one: All repos were disabled, keyboard switching was performed by ibus. The user was completely unaware of its function and never had tried to switch languages intentionally.

Re-enabling the repos, running ‘zypper remove --clean-deps ibus’ and ‘zypper dist-upgrade’ solved the issue.

3

In other words, one of the disadvantages of a rolling distribution is, that “stale” code can cause unwanted, never tested, code execution …

  • IMNSHO, an operating system can be likened to a robot vacuum-cleaner – it automatically gets rid of most of the dust but, one has to occasionally manually clean out the corners … >:)
4

It’s the hardware, stupid

Downloaded MemTest86 v8 Free Edition: https://www.memtest86.com/ Prepared an USB-stick and had the user run it. The hammering test would fail. Cleaning the memory slots and modules fixed that.:wink: