How to use Amharic EZ+ keyboard layout in Ubuntu 14.04?

Question

How do I use the previously available Amharic EZ+ keyboard layout in Ubuntu 14.04? The default keyboard for Amharic lacks the vowels or I just can't find them here is the keyboard layout that I have right now.

You can see the vowels are missing. I've tried to set the Sera as my keyboard option but I can't seem to get it to work, here is what I see when I run the ibus-setup application.

Solution

I found the answer to this question from the GNU/Linux Ethiopia Google Mailing list. One of our members, Teferra, gave out the answer a while back. The key is to add Amharic (sera (m17n)) input source in Text Entry options. To do this follow the instructions below:

1. First install the m17n package, sudo apt-get install ibus-m17n.
2. Then open dash (Super), and type Text Entry and choose to open that application. You will see the following window popup. There are several things you can do on this window but for our purposes we will only need to add Amharic (sera (m17n)) input source.

3. Add the Amharic (sera (m17n)) input source using the + button indicated there.

Once you've done that, the Amharic Keyboard would be available as usual.

Comments

[Achu]

Hey Tsega! Thank you for your efforts in bringing this solution to AskUbuntu. I hope this will help a lot of Ethiopian Ubuntu users :-)

[hashmuke]

I couldn't get this working. After installing ibus-m17n I don't have Amharic (sera(m17n)), just got a plain Amharic. When I use that I can write the first characters like ሀ፣ለ፣ሐ ... but I can't change them to their chain (not sure if that is the right word).

[hashmuke]

It is working perfectly after a reboot.