this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
475 points (93.6% liked)
Technology
69211 readers
3505 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So the keyboard I'm using is US International (with deadkeys), which is the standard keyboard for the Netherlands.
Certain key combinations should create an accented character, but certain other key combinations should simply print the accent followed by the character. Typing this way is essentially muscle memory for me, so if it deviates from what I'm used to it really trips me up badly.
Example:
', followed byeshould typeé(which Linux did correctly)', followed bymshould type'm(where Linux typed an accentedḿ)', followed bycshould typeç(where Linux typed an accentedć)', followed by'should type''(where Linux typed')', followed by[space]should type'(which Linux did correctly)I checked several forums, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to change this behaviour in Linux. Dead key behaviour is seemingly consistent between keyboard layouts, and it can only either be on or off?
Edit: It shouldn't even be that complex of an improvement to the OS.
If they were to add a defintion as to how deadkeys are supposed to work as part of the keyboard layout file, this wouldn't be an issue. I could just make my own "US Intl. with Dead Keys (NL)" layout and it would be fine.
Hey, so I just tested this and you're right, it doesn't work as you described.
I suppose I unconsciously found workarounds and just ran with it.
For the examples you mentioned:
I'm is achieved by typing ' and then space.
ç you can get with AltGr+<
The other two, I have no idea what they are, but I trust your judgment.
I also went around some forums and yeah it appears other people report it doesn't work as it should. A bummer.
Maybe there already are some custom keyboard layouts out there you can download?
To get
Wow! Thank you for going through the effort of figuring out whether there was a solution for me. I really appreciate it!
And yeah.. I could probably type all the characters I need to type through workarounds. But my problem is that I don't think I should have to relearn how to type in order to switch to Linux. It's a relatively niche issue I ran into, but I'm clearly not the only one running into it.
Which is a shame because I do want Linux to be more widely used than it is currently, and I think small annoyances like this are part of what is holding it back. It makes it more of a hassle to overcome the hurdle of switching OS.
You're most welcome!
And yes, I completely 100% agree. Hopefully there will soon be a fix for this, because like you said, it really sounds like something that should be able to be fixed relatively easily, lol.
Anyways, best of luck to you in the future!
I have one final question, which you might know perhaps.. Where would one go to make feature requests for Linux itself? If I quickly Google this I find places to make feature requests for specific distros, but not for Linux as a whole.
I ask because I suspect this issue is more fundamental to Linux itself, rather than the individual distros I tried.
Edit: Or maybe I am misunderstanding, and this is something that does need to be brought up with the distros
I suspect that's something that would need to be brought up either with the developers of the specific program that handles keyboard inputs or languages, if it cannot be changed in general. Or with the individual Desktop Environment projects that create the GUIs to change the underlying settings, if that setting just is not exposed graphically. Unfortunately I don't know what those would be, but maybe it can help point into a more precise direction for further research. I doubt that it is an issue that goes as deep as the Linux kernel being involved. (Take it with a grain of salt though, I'm mostly speculating.)
Edit: in a quick search I found this thread with a possible solution: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/trying-to-change-dead-key-behaviour-im-stumped/85029