keyboard layout variant won't stick (resets when new devices plug in, and on startup)

[Peter Hutterer]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2016 at 11:22:56AM +0100, Timo Paulssen wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I use the de-neo keyboard layout all day every day. It differs quite
> strongly from the regular de layout (think of it like dvorak or
> colemak). It has reached the point where I'm having a hard time typing
> regular de. This is why this problem is getting on my nerves.
> 
> Here's the symptoms:
> 
> Whenever I plug in an input device - wacom touchpad, steam controller,
> usb mouse, ... - or switch from a console back to X, i get the regular
> de keyboard layout back, and i have to type "setxkbmap de neo" in some
> terminal.
> 
> I set the de-neo via localectl, which among other things wrote the
> following content to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf:
> 
>     # Read and parsed by systemd-localed. It's probably wise not to edit
> this file
>     # manually too freely.
>     Section "InputClass"
>             Identifier "system-keyboard"
>             MatchIsKeyboard "on"
>             Option "XkbLayout" "de"
>             Option "XkbVariant" "neo"
>     EndSection
> 
> I can tell that this configuration gets picked up by the X server,
> because whenever i plug in a keyboard-like device, i see this in my xorg
> log:
> 
>     (**) Option "xkb_rules" "evdev"
>     (**) Option "xkb_model" "neo"
>     (**) Option "xkb_layout" "de"
> 
> I have no clue how to continue hunting down this problem. It doesn't
> help that I run the same distro (fedora workstation 23) on my desktop,
> where everything works just fine with - as far as i can tell - the same
> config. The laptop is a Thinkpad T440s, if that's interesting.

what DE are you using? any chance it's overwriting your setting?

Cheers,
   Peter
 
> I hope this list is the right place to ask about this. If not, please
> feel free to send me somewhere else. Looking forward to your insights,
> dear subscribers.
>   - Timo Paulssen