While the KDE setup wizard allows me to set the default layout at the install, for some reason, Plasma Settings offer customizing every other option except to edit the default keyboard layout, here is my system info, am I missing something?
Operating System: Fedora Linux 44
KDE Plasma Version: 6.7.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.28.0
Qt Version: 6.11.1
Kernel Version: 7.1.5-200.fc44.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 8 × AMD Ryzen 5 7520U with Radeon Graphics
Memory: 8 GiB of RAM (7.0 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon 610M
Manufacturer: HP
Product Name: HP Laptop 15-fc0xxx
For sure you’re missing what’s right under your nose.
I’m British English, living in Thailand, with a 75% Ajazz US layout keyboard with dual (Thai) legends - so definitely I changed the default layout, but actually created my own (called AK) based on the basic US keyboard, with 3rd level chooser, and edited in some of my own additions.
Notably some math symbols (= ≠ ≈ ≡) and currencies: £10 ≈ $13.31 ≈ €11.67 ≈ ฿446
These can also be edited into the popups with the new Plasma.
To begin with, you actually have to open Keyboard where you’ll find Layouts.
your keyboard layout is chosen at install by the language and location info you provided.
you can, of course, change this by going to settings > input devices > keyboard
under hardware you will match your physical keyboard with the setting that most closely defines it.
under layouts is where you can pick among the various options / languages, including some variants that offer an additional pair of characters per key cap.
to access these additional characters you need to go to the advanced tab and select a key as your 3rd level shift key
1st is just the key
2nd is the shifted key
3rd is holding down the 3rd level shift key
4th is holding down both the 3rd level shift key and the regular shift key
Paths often fail, whenever searching solutions online that say ‘go to AXInput & OutputKeyboard’ or whatever - it’s frustrating to fail, when you could just touch your menu key (or open krunner) and type ‘key’ to get ‘keyboard’ and execute that.
based on ben2talk’s response, I did realize that I can achieve the behavior I wish by adding the keyboard layout I use to custom layouts section to just add the layout I want; but, the problem with that is, that will not sync with Plasma Login Manager for some reason. I wished that we can set the system-level keyboard layout as we are able to, during install.
The system default (which is also used in the login manager) can, AFAIK, not be changed in System Settings. In that case the solution is to use the localectl command. Examples (not tried):
sudo localectl set-x11-keymap de for normal german layout.
sudo localectl set-x11-keymap us pc105 dvp caps:swapescape for programmer dvorak with capslock and escape swapped.
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