Changing the default Keymap in Debian

[LyleHaze]

I'll readily admit, this is probably easy stuff for those with more Linux experience, but I know I'm not the only Debian newbie here, so I thought I'd pass this along.

The default Wheezy installation came with the "Great Britian" keymap selected. On my US machine it was ALMOST a perfect match, but the @ and " keys were swapped.

With help from penguin master Stevens, I can offer this quick fix:

From a command line, or console, or whatever those linux people call a shell, enter
leafpad /etc/default/keyboard
which should open an editor with the keyboard configuration loaded. From there, simply change the line
XKBLAYOUT="gb" in to XKBLAYOUT="us"
or whatever alternate keyboard you'd like. Save, exit, and you should be all set!

P.S. I don't know if leafpad is what the "cool" linux users use, but I find it simple and comfortable. Maybe one day I'll learn one of the more cryptic editors like vi or emacs, but not today.

[daz]

I'll readily admit, this is probably easy stuff for those with more Linux experience, but I know I'm not the only Debian newbie here, so I thought I'd pass this along.

The default Wheezy installation came with the "Great Britian" keymap selected. On my US machine it was ALMOST a perfect match, but the @ and " keys were swapped.

With help from penguin master Stevens, I can offer this quick fix:

From a command line, or console, or whatever those linux people call a shell, enter
leafpad /etc/default/keyboard
which should open an editor with the keyboard configuration loaded. From there, simply change the line
XKBLAYOUT="gb" in to XKBLAYOUT="us"
or whatever alternate keyboard you'd like. Save, exit, and you should be all set!

Nice catch! I was looking in the Xorg config files. I think it would have taken me a little while to find that.

P.S. I don't know if leafpad is what the "cool" linux users use, but I find it simple and comfortable. Maybe one day I'll learn one of the more cryptic editors like vi or emacs, but not today.

Use what you feel comfortable with! I tend to use gedit quite a bit, there are many ways of doing the same thing under Linux.

Regards
Darren

[mechanic]

Do yourself a favor and install gnome-commander. It is much like Dopus for Linux.
It also supports opening a second window as root from its File menu, and from there
you can edit, move, delete, and other root stuff without using terminal (shell) commands.

There are some functions along the bottom and a right click on files gives another menu.