Debian Administration

You have probably got a UK keyboard setup when you want to be using one for the USA instead, or vice versa.

Without more details it's hard to say, but in either case it should be simple to fix.

To start with we need to see what setup you need to make things work correctly for you - then we need to make those changes permanent for you.

If you open up an xterm and run the following command you will have a UK keyboard setup:

skx@lappy:~$ setxkbmap gb

If you run that you can then type into the window to see if it does what you want. If it doesn't then chances are you want an American layout, so try this command instead:

skx@lappy:~$ setxkbmap us

If that one does what you want then we're sorted.

To make this a permanent change you need to become root and edit a file in the directory /etc/X11/.

It will either be called 'XF86Config-4' or just plain 'XF86Config'. If you have both editing both would be a simple approach!

You want to scroll down that file until you see the keyboard section which will look something like this:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "keyboard"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Change the section which says 'us' to read either 'us' or 'uk' - whichever one matched the one you experimented with earlier.

Logout and login again so that the windowing system restarts and that should be you sorted!

-- Steve.org.uk