Hello Everyone,
after installing Leap 15.6, I am facing a problem I have never encountered before (neither on Tumbleweed with KDE Plasma nor on Leap 15.5 with XFCE).
KDE is my DE.
I am using a mechanical keyboard with a US layout:
During the setup and the installation I selected the German Keyboard layout (I am used to this one, and the manufacturer didn’t sold the right layout, so I had no other choice). This one works normally and as usual in KDE itself.
When opening applications, things are getting difficult:
On my browser, the layout is fine (I am not using the default Firefox browser).
On LibreOffice, the layout is correct.
On nearly all other applications, the natively used layout is the US layout, even if I never selected nor installed it.
I tried to debug it a little the result of: locale -a
gives me:
Do you have any idea how I can fix this, what the problem might be? I am a bit cautious to change any config file, that’s why I dared to ask here first. I also might not be the only one with this problem.
This is unclear to me. Has the keyboard a US layout or a German layout?
BTW, this is about the layout of the keyboard and has nothing to do with locale or LANG . Those are only influencing output (like language chosen for messages, date formatting, formatting of numbers, etc.).
Yes, it is the same problem, however, I did not selected “english” during the SUSE install, I did select German for the installing language and “German” for the keyboard layout.
Sorry if I was unclear so:
I did select the “German” language and “Swiss-German Keyboard layout” during the install - while I myself am typing on a keyboard with a US layout.
Now nearly every application I am using, is taking the wrong keyboard layout (the US one) as the default layout, even if I did not choose any “English” language or layout on the installer.
I did not notice, that yast is also using the US keyboard-layout as default.
Nearly all my applications are using the US layout as the default keyboard, the only one that do not are my browser, my terminal and Libreoffice (those are using the correct one, the german keyboard-layout).
I already checked in the KDE “language & region” settings: there, German is selected as default. In the “Input devices” - " keyboard" settings, the default keyboard is selected and there is the test space to use your keyboard, and in the test space it is working as intended, it is writing with the German layout.
One other thing, that seems weird to me, is that under the “Language & Region” - “Typing Correction” settings, there are two options I can choose from: “German” and “American English (USA)” . However, this has never happened during any other install before.
When I selected the “German” language and “Swiss-German” Keyboard layout during the installation, it never installed any side language and there weren’t any other options to choose from in KDE (and in FXCE neither), only German.
I can only repeat what I tried to explain above. The choice of language has nothing to do with your keyboard layout. All the settings about language & region and the like, if on the system level or on the desktop level of a user, have nothing to do with your keyboard layout. All these setting work on the output site.
You keyboard is independent from this. You have a keyboard with a specific layout. It is bought with that layout. It is hardware. And you tell the system what hardware keyboard you have so it can interpret the key you hit on the board and translate it into the correct internal representation. You can type any language on your keyboard you want (as long as the characters you need are there). The keyboard is language agnostic. I have for example here a US keyboard and I type now English, but I can also type Dutch: het type toetsenbord heeft niets te doen met de taal die ik gebruik. Or German: Wenn du ein Schweizerdeutche Tastatur hast, sollst du das dem System zuführen. Wennn du ein US Tastatur hast sollst du das dem System zuführen. Du sollst dein System nicht vorlügen. Die Hardware ist wie sie ist. (Ich muß aber auf meinem US Tastatur bestimmte Tricks machen um die Umläute zu kriegen, aber dabei ändert sich die Hardware nicht).
Yes, I get that. But it doesn’t explain, why this problem comes up in the first place and never did come up before.
I really never had this problem, and used exactly the same install steps as I usually do.
I understand that I shouldn’t “lie” to my system, but not having the keys at the right place (for example the ¨ and the and nearly every other key is a no no for me, because i have to type quite a lot and in two different languages - french and german). Of course, I could have installed the system while selecting “US” keyboard, and then change it afterwards in KDE itself, but I didn’t do it because I might mess up with my passwords if I did during the installation (since it wouldn’t be the layout I am used to and special characters get messed up quite easily) and I also never had this problem happen to me at all.
Nice you now understand that meddling with locale and language settingwill not help with your problem. Then we can try to concentrate on the problem itself.
It is still not cleat to me what the hardware keyboard is you have. Is it Enslish (US) or is it Deutsch (Schweiz)?
I hope you now understand it can only be one and that you should tell the system the truth.
No need to use this tone, I didn’t do anything to you, and didn’t mean to offend you in any way .
And why bash on me if I never had this problem before - how was I supposed to know, I would have one by selecting the steps I usually select without having any problem?
My hardware keyboard is: a mechanical Keyboard with the US layout.
I am only trying to make clear you were on the wrong path searching for a solution. As, after my first post above, you still were looking at output influencing settings, I tried to make myself more clear (because I apparently failed the first time). Nothing more, nothing less.
Then you will not be surprised that my advice is to declare it as such to your system at installation (or correct it using YaST > Hardware > Keyboard). When you did otherwise earlier, that then IMHO was wrong. That it then worked to your satisfaction, does not make it correct and sooner or later it might backfire. And it seems to me that that is now.
I am still on KDE 5 (and Leap 15.5, will not change for several month until all dust settles down) and thus can not say what and how the KDE Settings offer the end-user to mimic other keyboard layouts on the hardware for use.
As said, I mainly tried with my post to avoid you searching in the wrong way and thus getting more and more confused.
It works fine now - the US keyboard is used as standard everywhere.
How can I now add another language that will be used by all applications? Is this possible? I still would like to use my keyboard as a Swiss-German Keyboard.
If I go to - the “keyboard-layout” settings in KDE and add: German (swiss),
The terminal and the system applications are now using the Swiss German keyboard while the other application are still US keyboard now (it is just as before changing the yast settings).
To me it looks as if not all applications (the non-KDE ones) follow this KDE setting. Are you having the same impression?
What I do not quite understand and where you could help me getting a better idea, is how you can use a US keyboard for another layout. Does this mean that when you type certain keys you get a different character then is shown on the key itself? And is in fact this Deutsch (Schweiz) layout using the same key, only with different characters as result. I ask because some of these hardware keyboards have a different place of keys throughout, not only the same configuration but with different outcome when pressed. See the very long Keyboard layout - Wikipedia
Exactly: I know the letters by heart anyway and there are only two letters changing places: z and y.
And The main big differences are the special characters like ä-ö-à-é-è which are all next to the Enter and backspace anyway. That’s how I always have used the keyboard since I got it, and while I had to get used to it, it works fine for me now.
I understand that. I use the Compose key for those (Compose-"-o for ö and Compose-'-e for é, etc.) and that has also grown into my fingers.
I assume the question is now, why in KDE 5 “foreign” applications like Firefox did follow the KDE setting of the keyboard layout, while in KDE 6 this is not the case.
While it could be that someone here might come with a reason (and maybe even a solution). it might be useful to also ask on the KDE forums https://discuss.kde.org/ or even on their Bugzilla https://bugs.kde.org/
Here’s what my dad did, when he could not get a keyboard with German layout ( as he was used to a German typewriter: with my help he set it to be a German layout keyboard by default, then with a red waterproof marker he drew the chars on the keycaps. Later I brought him a nice IBM German Layout keyboard, and guess what? He again used a marker to add the US layout.
BTW, never got him to using the compose key, which I do like @hcvv does. ♪♫
Yes, that’s what I’ll get used to then, thank you for your help nonetheless! (I already typed every y wrong, it will take some time to get used to).
I might open a ticket there but for now I have too much to do and I already lost some time on this, so probably not right now. If I find a solution I’ll post it here too (and in the other thread which seems to have a similar problem).
I have exactly the same issue. Some apps have stricly US_EN keyboard layout and it cannot be changed. I thought this is related to the applications from non openSUSE repos, in my case vscode and yandex browser, however I have DBeaver also, and that application works fine.
Hey, we’ve a very similar issue with 15.6 on our migration test computers (regardless if it is a fresh install or a migrated system).
The default desktop is Gnome and users are able to hot-swap between an EN/DE keymap on the top-right menu in Gnome. Regardless of the chosen keymap, GTK applications doing the right thing while QT applications like Zotero, Slack, Signal, Google Chrome Browser etc. defaulting to English until we fix it with yast or setxkbmap in a temporary manner. But this is not reboot resilient.
Of course, if I opt inside Gnome an EN keymap afterwards, the DE keymap is still set on QT. It seems like a synchronization issue in dependency to Wayland.
Opting for Gnome on Xorg at login and the keymap swap between EN/DE is in sync like it was with Leap 15.5.
Temp. help:
# As user:
setxkbmap -layout de
# Or choose Gnome/KDE-Xorg rather than Wayland on login screen
Hello, I had two accounts, one showing the behaviour you mention and one not.
The difference (and solution for the misssbehaving account) was a line in .bashrc:
Very interesting @gskillas. In our situation your way works in Calligra Words for example, but not in VLC, Slack, Zoom, Zotero, Google Chrome, or Signal for example. I know, some of my examples are not in the official repositories therefore lets talk about VLC…
What’s the difference in terms of QT/Wayland between Calligra Word and VLC then?
Whats the difference to Leap 15.5 where this wasn’t an issue?
.