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I switched from Qwerty to Dvorak, but the login screen still uses Qwerty.

How can I configure the login screen to use Dvorak?

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up vote 9 down vote accepted

In Ubuntu / Natty, edit the file /etc/default/keyboard, look for the XKBVARIANT setting, and set it to this:


This will tell GDM, the login manager, which keyboard layout to use per default.

Note: the comments in the file warn that this only takes effect after udev is restarted; I would just reboot the machine after changing it.

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This helped me with another problem. While I kept removing the Qwerty keyboard from my keyboard preferences, after I rebooted it always showed up again. I then removed it from the /etc/default/keyboard file as you said and I now no longer have the problem. –  snth Aug 7 '11 at 12:39
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