Two keyboards on one computer. When I write with A I want a US keyboard layout, when I use B I want Swedish. Possible?

Question

I have a laptop which I use an external keyboard with. When I type using the external keyboard I want to use a US keyboard layout, since that's the type of external keyboard I have. On the other hand, when I type using the integrated keyboard I'd like to use a Swedish layout.

Is this possible? And how would I go about doing it?

I'm asking here as I think we'll find most Linux expertise here.

Solution 1

First, you have to find the device ID of the keyboard to change:

$ xinput -list | grep -i key
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ LITEON Technology USB Keyboard            id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ LITEON Technology USB Keyboard            id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]

Then change the layout using setxkbmap:

$ setxkbmap -device 9 dvorak

Some versions of setxkbmap need a '-layout' argument:

$ setxkbmap -device 9 -layout dvorak

Solution 2

I can positively say that what you want to do is indeed possible. I achieved the specified scenario by first

sudo cat /dev/input/event(0,1,2..)

while typing on each keyboard to ensure that they were recognized as separate devices. Then I simply applied trial-and-error, experimenting with

setxkbmap -device (1-x) us.

I discovered that setxkbmap -device 1 us configured both (all) keyboards, while setxkbmap -device 6 us only affected the secondary. Of relevance is perhaps that they both were connected via PS/2.

This of course is not guaranteed to work for you, and doesn't even classify as a proper answer, but it confirms that it's at all possible. I don't know according to which scheme the individual keyboards are named in /dev/input, but I'm sure that the names can be specified in udev, making it possible to put the appropriate setxkbmap command in /etc/rc.local or similar.

Solution 3

Although this question is a tad old, I'd thought I'd share my solution since none of the other answers addressed how to have this work on boot.

My situation: I have a Happy Hacking Keyboard that plugs in via usb that has keys moved around (control where caps lock is, etc). I use this most of the time, but sometimes I would like to use the standard laptop keyboard or another usb keyboard. For these keyboards I created a custom keyboard layout.

The trick is that the custom keyboard layout should not be applied to the Happy Hacking Keyboard.

Solution: I created a Xorg config file as such:

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-keyboard.conf 
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "Happily Hacked Keyboard"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        MatchIsKeyboard "on"
        Driver "evdev"

        Option "XkbLayout" "us"
        Option "XkbVariant" "hhk"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "Happy Hacking Keyboard"
        MatchIsKeyboard "on"
        MatchVendor "Topre_Corporation"
        Driver "evdev"

        Option "XkbLayout" "us"
        Option "XkbVariant" "basic"
EndSection

The first part basically says for any standard keyboard, apply the us layout with the the custom variant. The second part says for the happy hacking keyboard, use the us layout with the basic variant.

You can match devices based on a bunch of parameters: xorg doc

Solution 4

It might be possible, judging by the -device argument to setxkbmap:

       -device device
               Specifies the numeric device id of the input device to be
               updated with the new keyboard layout. If not specified, the
               core keyboard device of the X server is updated.

Naturally, however, I do not have a second keyboard to try it at the moment.

-A Dvorak user

Solution 5

I have the same situation, a laptop with a Brazilian keyboard and a German external keyboard.

My solution was to add two setxkbmap calls, but the tricky part here is to add all the layouts you need on both calls:

setxkbmap -device 12 -layout de,br
setxkbmap -device 14 -layout br,de

Device 12 is the external german keyboard whille device 14 is the laptop's brazilian keyboard.

View more solutions

Comments

[Tommy McGuire]

Hmph. -device 0 switches both, -device 2 (should be the on-board keyboard per Arkenklo's answer) doesn't switch anything, at least on my laptop and USB keyboard.

[btelles]

Hi there, I did this and it works great for everything but the arrow keys and other directional keys (which no longer work at all). It could be that the keyboard is one of those ergonomic ones that have funky key mappings...any idea how to get those working again?

[ahmed afzaal]

So what's the best way to set this configuration at boot instead of having to manually invoke setxkbmap?

[Daniel]

your late answer maybe merits a late comment ... you have Identifier as "Happy Hacking Kbd" in both ... I think that's probably a mistake, the first InputClass Identifier should probably be "Generic Keyboard"

[zanegray]

@Daniel The identifiers are actually different, "Happily Hacked Keyboard" vs "Happy Hacking Keyboard", but only slightly :)

[Daniel]

thanks for the correct! ... I blame my bad reading glasses :)>v

[Golar Ramblar]

... but this (for keyboard greatly working, also different multiple layouts to cycle through are possible!, like us,ru,ua on one and de,cz,ua on the second keyboard) change for me somehow killed my middle mouse button of my external USB mouse. Have to look for what the interference is ...

[Sadi]

I'd love if this solution worked for me, but it isn't working - maybe because I can't get the vendor id right? The command "lsusb -v | grep -e idVendor" gave me "0x09da A4Tech Co., Ltd." so I also tried various options (without hexcode, underscore instead of space, etc.). Then I tried the vendor id obtained via "xinput list" and "udevadm info" (A4TECH). I even changed the number 30 to 50 also because I have a file "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf" including a global keyboard configuration. But I couldn't get anywere. Any ideas please? (Ubuntu 18.04)

[Max N]

On Ubuntu 19.04 the folder xorg.conf.d does not exist. It did not work for me to match the device MatchUSBID "046a:b090" Is this method still confirmed to work?

[rustyhu]

A little curious, why are there 2 ids(id=9; id=10) corresponding to the same USB keyboard device(LITEON Technology USB Keyboard)? I find 2 ids on my machine also(id=11; id=17), then which id should be used for setxkbmap -device?

[rustyhu]

@RichardTurner I write my setxkbmap ... configuration into ~/.xprofile file, it works fine after I log in to my Xorg desktop environment. Maybe this is not the best way.

[flicken]

@rustyhu I have two identical keyboards and choose the id of the keyboard I want to change. (You might have to guess which is which.)

[rustyhu]

@RichardTurner I tested on my Arch Linux and ~/.xsession should be a better place for setxkbmap ... configuration. Reference

[Gauthier]

How would you connect the USB manufacturer to the device ID? I have two keyboards from the same manufacturer, I want the layout setup to be portable across all machines I use with either of these two keyboards.