How do I change default keyboard layout (not input method) in Ubuntu 16.04?

Question

When I installed 16.04, I mistakenly chose the German keyboard layout. My computer is a Japanese computer with Japanese keys, but I regularly use several languages. How can I change the default system layout for all of my languages without reinstalling the OS? I cannot for the life of me find a GUI or CLI way to do this. Many thanks for your help.

Solution 1

I'm not able to reproduce the problem you have mentioned in comments, i.e. that enabling a Japanese keyboard layout wouldn't make a difference. I added Japanese, and the resulting keyboard layout looks like this:

Then I opened gedit, switched to "Ja" via the input source indicator, and the expected characters according to the image above appeared when I typed.

Solution 2

In a shell:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Solution 3

Install "Japanese iBus MOZC" Keyboard:

sudo apt-get install ibus-mozc mozc-server mozc-utils-gui

Re-login (this is important!) and find mozc in System Settings -> Text Entry when you click the + button.

If "your" Japanese is not listed, enter this command in shell

im-config 

After that you should have these Japanese keyboard input sources in Text Entry when you click the + button: Japanese (Dvorak), Japanese (Kana), Japanese (Kana 86), Japanese (Macintosh), Japanese (Mozc)(IBus), Japanese (OADG 109A), Japanese (PC-98xx Series)

Comments

[Slim Down]

PeterN, thank you for your suggestions. I should have mentioned in my question that I regularly use Japanese iBus MOZC, and have already tried un- and reinstalling, with reboots. I also tried your second suggestion in a terminal, but that did not seem to solve the problem.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

@SlimDown: What's the output of cat /etc/default/keyboard?

[Slim Down]

Gunnar, thank you for your kind help and persistence. Having not worked previously, I re-added "Japanese" within All Settings / Text Entry, and this time, it seems to have worked, both for "Japanese" and the "Japanese (Mozc)(iBus)" that I normally use. While I am pleased, I am most puzzled as to why it worked this time and not before. In any case, thank you.

[Slim Down]

# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE # Consult the keyboard(5) manual page. XKBMODEL="asus_laptop" XKBLAYOUT="jp" XKBVARIANT="OADG109A" XKBOPTIONS="" BACKSPACE="guess"

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

@SlimDown: Glad that you made it work. :)

[Marc van Dongen]

Great solution.

[Slim Down]

I have just recently set up another machine and run into the same issue. This time, I opened up IBus preferences in a terminal, ibus-setup and un-toggled Advanced --> Use system keyboard layout. Again, I'm not sure why, but this seems to have worked. Anyone still having issues after following the method above, try the IBus preferences.