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How to set latin american keyboard - Arch/Linux

TL;DR
Pre-installation loadkeys la-latin1
Post-installation (of arch and xorg): setxkbmap -layout latam,latam

Introduction


I recently went back to Arch, and had some time figuring out how to set the Latin American keyboard, and it was quite easy, probably some minutes with the man pages and it would've been a cheese, okey so i got some info from stackoverflow and from the Official Arch Linux Wiki

Pre-installation


This is quite easy as you may load the keys with the `loadkeys`command _(i.e `loadkeys la-latin1`)_ but when you install [xorg][2] and a desktop environment (Like [XFCE][3] or [KDE][4]) you may find that on a tty session your keymap is saved, but in the xfce session no.

Post-installation


_(I am going to use XFCE as an example since it is my prefered desktop enviromnent)._ There is an xfce plugin called [xfce4-xkb-plugin][5] but i wanted to do it all in the terminal so i found my way with coffee and patience. First, i could not set the keyboard layout to Spanish, so i googled how to do that, then i realized something was wrong, there where keys that do not correspond (Since i had a Spanish layout, not a Latin American, there are some tiny differences and no minor changes, but still, it annoyed me).

Solution post-installation


I used setxkbmap command with the `-layout` parameter, like this
``` setxkbmap -layout latam,latam # If you want it permament just do echo "setxkbmap -layout latam,es" >> $HOME/.profile ```

And that's it, i hope you Latin American brothers and sisters have found your solution! (Thanks to Terdon for this answer)

Top comments (1)

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ch3ber profile image
Eber Alejo

Increíble post, me ayudaste bastante.