up vote 100 down vote favorite
57

I use 12.04 Server in command line mode (no X installed), and I would like to change the keyboard layout. How can I do this?

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Mike, would you consider changing the accepted answer? It looks like there is a much better answer now than the originally accepted answer. – Azendale Apr 24 '16 at 18:29
up vote 49 down vote accepted

Please try the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-data

If it says you don't have the package, then install console-data with:

sudo apt-get install console-data

More about Locale Configuration: LocaleConf - Community Help Wiki

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15  
Like that other answer mentions: This does not carry over a reboot. (tested in 12.04.1 LTS) – JonnyJD Aug 1 '13 at 20:11
1  
A hint for people who want to change their keyboard layout during console install: Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add 'universe' to the listed URL. Otherwise it can't find consol-data – Tobias F. Meier Aug 19 '13 at 17:46
up vote 180 down vote

After trying sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-data, I found out that it doesn't work after a reboot.

However,

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

does work after reboot and also has more options.

More info here.

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1  
How do I find out what kind of keyboard I have? It's the Windows 8 Surface pro one. What's the US standard one? – CMCDragonkai Apr 9 '14 at 2:16
16  
This is the correct answer, not the other one. – Clayton Dukes Jun 19 '14 at 15:55
    
Older Ubuntu releases, such as Lucid Lynx (10.04), don't have the keyboard-configuration package. Göran's link has the correct answer for these: sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup If your cursor keys don't work as expected in the ncurses UI, try those on the numeric keypad. – lbo Oct 9 '16 at 8:43
    
Works for 16.04. – gernot Jan 21 '17 at 12:08
up vote 18 down vote

try

loadkeys es (Spanish, for example)
loadkeys pt (Portuguese, for example)
loadkeys br (Brazilian Portuguese, for example)

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up vote 5 down vote
  • Set US layout: setxkbmap us
  • Set GB layout: setxkbmap gb
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7  
This commands only works for Ubuntu Desktop, not on Ubuntu Server. – blkpws Aug 20 '15 at 16:44
up vote 4 down vote

The correct solution to make permanent is:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
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up vote 3 down vote

I just had this issue on a console mode only VM.

The solution in my case was editing /etc/default/keyboard and changing the

XKBLAYOUT="de"

line (a german VM) to

XKBLAYOUT="us"

to work with my US keyboard and then rebooting.

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I believe this only works with a GUI. Also - the reboot is not really required, you can also set the variable in the current terminal by simply overwriting it. XKBLAYOUT="us" – SaAtomic Jun 9 '17 at 8:28
up vote 2 down vote

Using Ubuntu 13.10 Server as a Virtual Machine in VirtualBox, this worked for me:

(no GUI, only command-line mode)

Default keyboard layout was French, 'AZERTY'

loadkeys us (English, was not 'en' for me, as some docs state)

Note that you will likely have to run the command as sudo loadkeys us.

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You might want to edit your last line and use sudo instead of root, since root is not the recommended method for commands needing administrator priviledges. – RCF May 9 '15 at 3:34
    
I could not get loadkeys us to work, even with sudo. It was saying that the file "us" couldn't be found. This on my Raspberry Pi. – jocull Sep 25 '16 at 17:48

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