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Topic: Odd problem with new KDE install - it's typing Arabic (Read 1074 times) previous topic - next topic
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Odd problem with new KDE install - it's typing Arabic

This is actually my third Artix install.  First was a Manjaro conversion.  Second was a fresh install to a VM under a Gentoo host.  This one is a fresh install replacing Windows Vista.  I used the i3 iso, and used calamares to only install a fairly minimal system.  Boot and root partitions are ext4, with a small swap partition. I then booted into the new system, tweaking things as I wanted, and adding groups of packages, mainly xorg and then KDE/Plasma stuff.
(Minor diversion: why doesn't xorg-xinit depend on xorg-server?  how can it be used without it?)
(Second minor diversion:  why do the iso's still have the old mirrorlist?  Things were not going as I expected until I noticed that, then manually added one of the new mirrors, and then updated the mirrorlist to the complete new set.  I think it would save a lot of grief for folks if the iso were updated to use the new list.)
(Third diversion: the system initially installed nouveau, which gave starts X showing the KDE startup stuff, but flashing and sliding around the screen, and then a blank screen with the mouse cursor, but nothing else.  Switching to the nvidia-304xx-lts driver fixed all of that.)
Anyway, the system now boots cleanly to text console, and I can use "startx" to launch a KDE session.  The only problem is that when I type anything (in konsole or even the Alt-X2 text box to launch an app) it types in Arabic (right to left.)  I've checked the systemsettings, and all locale info is US English, which is also the only preferred language.  All typing on the text consoles is in English.  All displays are correctly in English.  I've looked through all the logs I can think of, and don't see anything amiss.  Can anyone think of what might be causing this, or where else I can look for potential problems or hints?

Re: Odd problem with new KDE install - it's typing Arabic

Reply #1 –
Well, I think I found the culprit, but I still have no idea whether I did something stupid (unlikely, but certainly possible) or it's phase of the moon, or a bug or just a glitch in the install process.
My first hint was finding an error in rc.log - /etc/init.d/keymap was trying to load [af] which didn't exist.  /etc/conf.d/keymaps says there is a complete tree of keymaps in /usr/share/keymaps - but that folder does not exist.  I changed af to us, but no apparent effect.
However, I then started grepping for "af" and found it in the Xorg logs.  This led me to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d and the only file in that directory - 00-keyboard.conf.  Renamintg it so it isn't used, and X starts up and works just fine.  My concern is that that file says "Read and parsed by systemd-localed" although it doesn't acatually say what generated the file.
I do need to become more comfortable with pacman, and it's less used options, but at least I'm able to use the system now.