Even though they all have their own ways of handling it, every Linux desktop environment makes it simple to customize your keyboard layout for your language, region, and personal preference.

LXDE

The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE) is a simple environment for modern Linux-based operating systems. Because it has a minimal design, changing the keyboard layout for LXDE is straightforward.

GNOME/Budgie

KDE Plasma

XFCE

On XFCE you can find the keyboard layout settings under the keyboard settings application. You can either get there through the generic “Settings” app for XFCE or directly through “Keyboard” under the “Settings” section of your menu.

Cinnamon

MATE

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is a simple yet elegant desktop environment that you can install in modern Linux distributions. Knowing that, changing the keyboard layout for this environment is incredibly easy. Image credit: The figure of Crime Scene Investigation on keyboard by 123RF. All screenshots by Ramces Red For example, a standard desktop keyboard would be a 110-key keyboard, while a laptop might be slightly less. The keyboard model value tells the Linux kernel what keys and signals it should expect while the user is typing. The keyboard layout and variant, on the other hand, are the internal mappings for the keys of a specific keyboard model. Changing the layout or variant in a machine does not change the signals that the kernel expects, so a 110-key model can both be used for a French AZERTY layout and a German QWERTZ layout. One issue with this approach, however, is that the symbols printed on your keyboard will not line up properly to the internal symbol table in Linux. For example, pressing the Y key on a US keyboard that uses a German layout will print Z. Because of that, some keyboard layouts will look for specific keyboard signals from the models that it expects while disregarding other signals from unknown models. For example, the Japanese keyboard layout uses a different keyboard model to accommodate switching between different character sets. One way to solve this is to use the type of keyboard that the layout expects from the machine, so if you intend on using a Japanese layout, you will need to also use a Japanese keyboard model.