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System Locale and Keyboard Configuration

indexterm:[keyboard configuration] Last review: The *system locale* specifies the language settings of system services and user interfaces. The *keyboard layout* settings control the layout used on the text console and graphical user interfaces.

These settings can be made by modifying the /etc/locale.conf configuration file or by using the localectl utility. You can also set these settings during system installation using the installer graphical interface, text mode interface, or the keyboard and lang Kickstart commands. See the link:https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/fFedora 31/install-guide[Fedora Installation Guide] for information about these options.

Setting the System Locale

System-wide locale settings are stored in the /etc/locale.conf file, which is read at early boot by the systemd daemon. The locale settings configured in /etc/locale.conf are inherited by every service or user, unless individual programs or individual users override them.

The basic file format of /etc/locale.conf is a newline-separated list of variable assignments. For example, German locale with English messages in /etc/locale.conf looks as follows:

LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=C

Here, the LC_MESSAGES option determines the locale used for diagnostic messages written to the standard error output. To further specify locale settings in /etc/locale.conf, you can use several other options, the most relevant are summarized in Options configurable in /etc/locale.conf. See the locale(7) manual page for detailed information on these options. Note that the LC_ALL option, which represents all possible options, should not be configured in /etc/locale.conf.

Table 1. Options configurable in /etc/locale.conf
Option Description

LANG

Provides a default value for the system locale.

LC_COLLATE

Changes the behavior of functions which compare strings in the local alphabet.

LC_CTYPE

Changes the behavior of the character handling and classification functions and the multibyte character functions.

LC_NUMERIC

Describes the way numbers are usually printed, with details such as decimal point versus decimal comma.

LC_TIME

Changes the display of the current time, 24-hour versus 12-hour clock.

LC_MESSAGES

Determines the locale used for diagnostic messages written to the standard error output.

Displaying the Current Status

The localectl command can be used to query and change the system locale and keyboard layout settings. To show the current settings, use the status option:

localectl status
Example 1. Displaying the Current Status

The output of the previous command lists the currently set locale, keyboard layout configured for the console and for the X11 window system.

~]$ localectl status
   System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: us
      X11 Layout: n/a

Listing Available Locales

To list all locales available for your system, type:

localectl list-locales
Example 2. Listing Locales

Imagine you want to select a specific English locale, but you are not sure if it is available on the system. You can check that by listing all English locales with the following command:

~]$ localectl list-locales | grep en_
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU
en_AU.iso88591
en_AU.utf8
en_BW
en_BW.iso88591
en_BW.utf8

output truncated

Setting the Locale

To set the default system locale, use the following command as root:

localectl set-locale LANG=locale

Replace locale with the locale name, found with the localectl list-locales command. The above syntax can also be used to configure parameters from Options configurable in /etc/locale.conf.

Example 3. Changing the Default Locale

For example, if you want to set British English as your default locale, first find the name of this locale by using list-locales. Then, as root, type the command in the following form:

~]# localectl set-locale LANG=en_GB.utf8

Changing the Keyboard Layout

The keyboard layout settings enable the user to control the layout used on the text console and graphical user interfaces.

Displaying the Current Settings

As mentioned before, you can check your current keyboard layout configuration with the following command:

localectl status
Example 4. Displaying the Keyboard Settings

In the following output, you can see the keyboard layout configured for the virtual console and for the X11 window system.

~]$ localectl status
   System Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8
       VC Keymap: us
      X11 Layout: us

Listing Available Keymaps

To list all available keyboard layouts that can be configured on your system, type:

localectl list-keymaps
Example 5. Searching for a Particular Keymap

You can use grep to search the output of the previous command for a specific keymap name. There are often multiple keymaps compatible with your currently set locale. For example, to find available Czech keyboard layouts, type:

~]$ localectl list-keymaps | grep cz
cz
cz-cp1250
cz-lat2
cz-lat2-prog
cz-qwerty
cz-us-qwertz
sunt5-cz-us
sunt5-us-cz

Setting the Keymap

To set the default keyboard layout for your system, use the following command as root:

localectl set-keymap map

Replace map with the name of the keymap taken from the output of the localectl list-keymaps command. Unless the --no-convert option is passed, the selected setting is also applied to the default keyboard mapping of the X11 window system, after converting it to the closest matching X11 keyboard mapping. This also applies in reverse, you can specify both keymaps with the following command as root:

localectl set-x11-keymap map

If you want your X11 layout to differ from the console layout, use the --no-convert option.

localectl --no-convert set-x11-keymap map

With this option, the X11 keymap is specified without changing the previous console layout setting.

Example 6. Setting the X11 Keymap Separately

Imagine you want to use German keyboard layout in the graphical interface, but for console operations you want to retain the US keymap. To do so, type as root:

~]# localectl --no-convert set-x11-keymap de

Then you can verify if your setting was successful by checking the current status:

~]$ localectl status
   System Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: us
      X11 Layout: de

Apart from keyboard layout (map), three other options can be specified:

localectl set-x11-keymap map model variant options

Replace model with the keyboard model name, variant and options with keyboard variant and option components, which can be used to enhance the keyboard behavior. These options are not set by default. For more information on X11 Model, X11 Variant, and X11 Options see the kbd(4) man page.

Additional Resources

For more information on how to configure the keyboard layout on Fedora, see the resources listed below:

Installed Documentation

  • localectl(1) — The manual page for the localectl command line utility documents how to use this tool to configure the system locale and keyboard layout.

  • loadkeys(1) — The manual page for the loadkeys command provides more information on how to use this tool to change the keyboard layout in a virtual console.

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