How do I change keyboard geometry from 104 to 105 keys?

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 and I have been experiencing the following issue with former releases as well.

I am using a German keyboard layout. However, I am missing the key to display the pipe- / inequality-signs (which on German keyboards is supposed to be left to the Y key).

I already tried to add or remove different German keyboard layouts using system settings but non of the layouts include this key. The best I could get so far is to have access to t he following symbols: » and «. However, these are not the appropriate German inequality signs plus the pipe symbol is missing.

See this screenshot of my German keyboard layout:

4

1 Answer

It might be, that the wrong keyboard model is selected. To view currently installed keyboard model issue:

setxkbmap -print | grep geometry

If you see pc104 there you will have a 104 key layout where the > < | key is not defined.

In order to use a typical German 105 keys keyboard, you have to choose the "pc105" type, labeled "Generische PC-Tastatur mit 105 Tasten (Intl)" in the German localization of Ubuntu on installation. To change this later you can issue

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

or edit /etc/default/keyboard as root. My file looks as following:

# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE
# Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.
XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="de"
XKBVARIANT="nodeadkeys"
XKBOPTIONS=""
BACKSPACE="guess"

On Xfce you can change the setting for your user only as well. The respective option is in Settings/Keyboard Settings/Layout. Nevertheless, since I don't use Unity or Gnome, I have no idea where the respective setting is hidden there (if someone knows: please update this answer).

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