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I switched from Qwerty to Dvorak, but the login screen still uses Qwerty.

How can I configure the login screen to use Dvorak?

1 Answer 1

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In Ubuntu / Natty, edit the file /etc/default/keyboard, look for the XKBVARIANT setting, and set it to this:

XKBVARIANT="dvorak"

This will tell GDM, the login manager, which keyboard layout to use per default.

Note: the comments in the file warn that this only takes effect after udev is restarted; I would just reboot the machine after changing it.

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  • This helped me with another problem. While I kept removing the Qwerty keyboard from my keyboard preferences, after I rebooted it always showed up again. I then removed it from the /etc/default/keyboard file as you said and I now no longer have the problem.
    – snth
    Aug 7, 2011 at 12:39
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    I can confirm this still works on Trusty. In fact it seems to be the only way to change the login screen keyboard layout.
    – poolie
    May 20, 2014 at 4:11

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