Celeb Glow
general | March 22, 2026

Same keyboard layout is different on different computers

Recently I received a computer istalled with Ubuntu 18.04.06 LTS which I cannot reinstall fresh.

When I set the keyboard layout to Slovak, I get this:

Slovak layout on new PC

That is something entirely different than what I'm used to. Apart from having to press AltGr instead of Shift to type numbers, completely different symbol mappings, this keyboard is QWERTY. Plain Slovak should be QWERTZ. For QWERTY there are Slovak QWERTY options. That means there is no way for me to select a Slovak QWERTZ layout on that computer, all choices result in QWERTY letter layout.

This is what I expect when I select the Slovak layout:Expected Slovak layout, from my personal PCThis is a screenshot from my personal Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS computer. Also when I type in Slovak layout on other computers, this is the familiar behavior.

How could this happen? What can I do about it? I tried removing and then re-adding Slovak language in the "Install languages" dialog, did not help.

setxkbmap -query -v 10:

Setting verbose level to 10
locale is C
Trying to load rules file ./rules/evdev...
Trying to load rules file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev...
Success.
Applied rules from evdev:
rules: evdev
model: pc105
layout: us,sk,us
variant: ,,
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes: evdev+aliases(qwerty)
types: complete
compat: complete
symbols: pc+us+sk:2+us:3+inet(evdev)
geometry: pc(pc105)
rules: evdev
model: pc105
layout: us,sk,us
variant: ,,

cat /etc/default/keyboard:

XKBLAYOUT=us,sk
BACKSPACE=guess
XKBVARIANT=,
4

1 Answer

Previous user apparently replaced /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/sk with a different file, a modified layout supposed to be better suited for programming than the original Slovak layout. Instead of following a more complicated procedure to add this as a separate layout choice, they just replaced the original one.

Fixed by restoring the original file, since no one else will be using this computer right now.

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password

Post as a guest

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy