I've upgraded to Precise and the issue continues. This is what I've done since then without results that stick.
Thinking that the problem is linked to the fact that I uninstalled other-than-English language support with BleachBit, I did the following. reinstalled language-selector-gnome reinstalled language-pack-en-base I went back to now called Keyboard Layout and the + button is still faded. I even went so far as to add Spanish locale to see if I could add another layout, but this didn't make a difference. I can't add any layouts to the ones I already have installed (US alternative, US International, English Mac, and the International alt/Gr version). I tried the following: dpkg-reconfigure locales update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8 Although it did seem to update my locale settings, when I went back to the now called Keyboard Layout, the + button was still faded. I haven't tried dpkg-reconfigure localeconfig because this is not installed and apparently xkeyboard-config is an eol. xkb-data looks promissing from the read in software-center: "This package contains configuration data used by the X Keyboard Extension (XKB), which allows selection of keyboard layouts when using a graphical interface." A quick wajig reinstall xkb-data proved my hopes wrong. It seems the only thing that temporarily allowed me to install more layouts was sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration. I selected the colemak layout to see if took. I ran it but by the time I rebooted, the change didn't stick. Plugging in an external keyboard also makes colemak in the applet disappear. The strange thing about using dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration is that the app menu applet shows the change but System Settings --> Keyboard Layout doesn't. It always shows the eternal US alternative, US International, English Mac, and the International alt/Gr layouts. And I can never add a layout through this pane. I just reinstalled iso-codes, and for a few minutes I saw that the keyboard Unity "applet" showed colemak I had installed previously with. I relogged back in and it was gone but colemak shows in cat /etc/default/keyboard but not in Xorg. A quick alt+cntl F1 show me that it did take, only in console. "XKBMODEL="pc104" XKBLAYOUT="us" XKBVARIANT="colemak" XKBOPTIONS="terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp" Somehow I don't think sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration was meant to (only?) change the console layout. I'm just reading /etc/default/keyboard and it says the following. If you change any of the following variables and X is configured to use this file, then the changes will become visible to X only if udev is restarted. You may need to reboot the system. I can assume that X is listening, at least until I reboot, when changes are thrown away. So, I assume there is a conflict between more than one file or sets of files as to which layouts take predominance. Any ideas anyone? This one has me stumped. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/881222 Title: Alternative keyboard layouts missing in Keyboard Preferences in Oneiric To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-control-center/+bug/881222/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
