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I'm using Ubuntu MATE 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS.

I want to change current keyboard layout indication from text (for example ru, en) to the corresponding country flags.

How can I do this?

1 Answer 1

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On Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS and newer you need to send one command:

gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags true

it will change MATE Panel appearance from

ru in mate-panel

to

russian flag in mate-panel


On Ubuntu 16.04 LTS having MATE 1.12 this method does not work out-the-box (it is bug 1783543), but we have two options here:

  • download flags manually and place them in home folder:

      mkdir -p ~/.icons/flags
      cd ~/.icons/flags/
      wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linuxmint/flags/master/usr/share/iso-flag-png/{ru,us}.png
    

    then toggle layout indicator state:

      gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags false
      gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags true
    

    and we will get flags in place. Note: I used ru and us, you can pick others from LinuxMint GitHub repository.

  • use newer MATE 1.16 from official xenial-mate PPA:

      sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/xenial-mate
      sudo apt update
      sudo apt full-upgrade
    

    then enable flags

      gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags true
    

    and we can get flags in place after reboot and login.


On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS we need to download flags manually (as in 16.04 LTS):

mkdir -p ~/.icons/flags
cd ~/.icons/flags/
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linuxmint/flags/master/usr/share/iso-flag-png/{ru,us}.png

then toggle layout indicator state:

gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags false
gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags true

and we will get flags in place.

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  • can we do the same thing with a standard Ubuntu (using gnome)? NB: you lost connection after appearance change
    – damadam
    Jul 25, 2018 at 13:51
  • The solution above does not fail on theme appearance change. It may fail if somebody miss flag for new language :) About GNOME currently we have solution for Unity (runs indicator-keyboard) and GNOME FlashBack (using gnome-panel with indicator-keyboard) on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS.
    – N0rbert
    Jul 25, 2018 at 17:02

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