What is the Linux name of the Belgian French keyboard layout of my HP EliteBook 850 G4 ?

[AlterMind]

Hi,

I have enabled Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on my Win 10 Pro environment and added a XFCE4 GUI on top of the default bash CLI. However, once I'm initiating a rdp/mstsc connection to the xfce GUI service it appears that no keyboard settings are defined, defaulting to the inadequate US layout, while I'm using the Belgian French layout.

When executing the following linux command under bash before starting the xfe GUI :

~> sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

and accepting the defaults proposed (Generic 105 keys Intl PC, Belgian origin, Belgian layout) that doesn't work : not only the keyboard remains with the US layout, but the list of keyboards layouts I can choose from inside the XFCE GUI settings is empty.

Can you assist me in identifying the correct keyboard name for linux ? Thanks a lot for your help !

PS: see hereto attached a screenshot with the lits of HP-related keyboards (not sure any of thous would match at all).

[CF4]

Hi

I would look at values for these...

### Language/Country ###
knoppix lang=ch|cn|de|da|es|fr|it   specify language/keyboard [Hint: 1]
knoppix lang=nl|pl|ru|sk|tr|tw|us   specify language/keyboard
knoppix keyboard=us xkeyboard=us    Use different keyboard (text/X)
knoppix utc                         Use Universal Time [→ Tip]
knoppix tz=Europe/Berlin            Use this timezone for TZ

https://askubuntu.com/questions/728998/how-to-change-keyboard-layout-to-belgiandutch-or-belgianfrenc...

 https://www.wikihow.com/Change-Keyboard-Layout-in-Ubuntu

command: setxkbmap be

Section "Keyboard"
		Protocol        "Standard"
		XkbRules        "xfree86"
		XkbModel        "pc101"
		XkbLayout       "be"
	EndSection

The  keyboard  file  describes the properties of the keyboard. It is read by setupcon(1) in order to configure the keyboard on the console.  In Debian systems the  default keyboard layout is described in /etc/default/keyboard and it is shared between X and the console.

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Belgian-HOWTO/configuration.html

and finally  http://www.xfree86.org/current/XKB-Config.html#

[AlterMind]

Hi CF4 !

Thanks a lot for your quick response and support ! A lot of information is provided and it made me seek various directions. Here is my feedback

I have no idea where the values in the code extract with the knoppix prefix reside or how they are produced (I searched for a knoppix console command but no result was returned), so I skipped this hint.

The URLs to askubuntu and wikihow both refer to an actual (full) Ubuntu distribution, i.e. with all necessary installed packages, whistles and bells that allow to actuall seek for the settings panel and manage through available values.

They are of no use to me so far as I haven't installed a full flown distribution, as I've explained, but an XFCE desktop and XRDP connection service, but obviously I'm missing some important sublayers, namely those that set-up the keyboard and language.

The command setxkbmap is to be used under a terminal (i.e. within an XFCE desktop session).As you can see the command even fails : it is still missing some input.

paul@ITEM-S58742:~$ sudo setxkbmap be
[sudo] password for paul: 
XKB extension not present on :12.0

Note that I have had the same error message with the 'fr' keyboard map.

My /etc/default/keyboard file content looks like this:

paul@ITEM-S58742:~$ cat /etc/default/keyboard
# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE

# Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="be"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS="compose:ralt"

BACKSPACE="guess"

I believe the above content was created (or at least updated) when I ran the command

paul@ITEM-S58742:~$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

as documented by a screenshot in my original post. The trouble is, I have no idea what else to choose from ! "PC105" comes selected when I start dpkg-reconfigure. If I'm not mistaken, PC105 is the very common (desktop) keyboard with separate arrow keys and numeric pad, etc.

On the HP EliteBook 850 G4 I'm using I've counted 101 keys (there are no Scroll Lock, Break, etc keys) .

Besides, the /keyboard file doesn't have any reference to the fact that it's an azerty (or belgian-french). 

This is excatly the reason why I'm raising the topic to HP here : can they help me identify and select the keyboard name / layout from the dpkg-reconfigure list ?  Or give me the values that would be relevant for the EliteBook 850  G4 laptop keyboard ?

I have started to explore the two other additional links (Belgian-HowTo and XKB-Config) but both are pretty ancient, delve into technicalities and require an actual Linux expertise that I don't have. Each section mentions yet another tool and another config aspect and it never ends. Furthermore, despite all I've read, they mention tools that help you fiddle here and there (with variations by distro) but none relate to the specificities of the laptop keyboard, among other the one of *this* EliteBook 850 G4 which is pretty recent.

Last but not least, in my various attempts in trying to use the tools that *are* available in my WSL + XRDP +XFCE installation, I managed to kind of lock me out from any successful XFCE GUI login via RDP! Every login fails now. Oh Great. Another issue on my plate to resolve ! Good Lord tell me what you want, this is why Linux adoption (beyond full distros) is so held against by itself. Pardon my French.

[CF4]

Hi

So since I don't have all the fancy doodads you do, but WSL runs for me, I assume the keyboard is picked up somewhere in the lower layers of HAL.

So if I changed my language and keyboard in W10 would Bash on Ubuntu on Windows know the difference?

Your Laptop has a 'Belgian' keyboard available  "Belgium      836621-A41" so maybe change the W10 settings.

The man says sttings need to match on client and server.

 If you have an Xserver and a client shell running on different computers and some XKB configuration files on those machines are different, you  can  get  problems specifying  a keyboard map by model, layout, and options names.  This is because setxkbmap converts its arguments to names of XKB configuration files according to files that are on the client-side computer, then sends these file names to the server where xkbcomp has to compose a complete keyboard map using files  which  the server  has.  Thus if the sets of files differ in some way, the names that setxkbmap generates can be unacceptable on the server side.  You can solve this problem by running the xkbcomp on the client side too.  With the -print option setxkbmap just prints the file names in an appropriate format to its stdout and this output can be piped directly to the xkbcomp input.  
For example, the command
       setxkbmap us -print | xkbcomp - $DISPLAY

       makes both steps run on the same (client) machine and loads a keyboard map into the server.

The WSL is a Microsoft / Ubuntu lashup and HP would be wise to keep out of it.