Switch between the keyboard layouts of the Xserver/xorg?

Question

I had added up English(US), Belgian(alternative), Tamil Keyboard layouts using the GUI.

How do I easily switch between these three layouts from terminal?

Answer 1

In Ubuntu 13.10, if your keyboard layouts are exactly in this order: English (US), Belgian (alternative), Tamil and:

• if you have set English (US) keyboard layout, then:

  • to change to Belgian (alternative) keyboard layout, use:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources "[('xkb', 'be+oss'), ('xkb', 'in+tam'), ('xkb', 'us')]"
    

  • to change to Tamil keyboard layout, use:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources "[('xkb', 'in+tam'), ('xkb', 'us'), ('xkb', 'be+oss')]"
    

• if you have set Belgian (alternative) keyboard layout, then:

  • to change to Tamil keyboard layout, use:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources "[('xkb', 'be+oss'), ('xkb', 'in+tam'), ('xkb', 'us')]"
    

  • to change to English (US) keyboard layout, use:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources "[('xkb', 'in+tam'), ('xkb', 'us'), ('xkb', 'be+oss')]"
    

• if you have set Tamil keyboard layout, then:

  • to change to English (US) keyboard layout, use:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources "[('xkb', 'be+oss'), ('xkb', 'in+tam'), ('xkb', 'us')]"
    

  • to change to Belgian (alternative) keyboard layout, use:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources "[('xkb', 'us'), ('xkb', 'be+oss'), ('xkb', 'in+tam')]"
    

Obs: These commands works only in Ubuntu 13.10 (and maybe later versions).

Answer 2

You can change keyboard layouts using setxkbmap. This is guaranteed to work with any version of Ubuntu. To change to us layout:

setxkbmap us

To change to tamil:

setxkbmap in+tam

to change to Belgian:

setxkbmap be+oss

The preferences will be kept until you close your session or restart the system.