Hey there!

My (Korean) wife’s notebook, an older LG gram, does not support Windows 10 anymore and I could convince her to switch to linux.

A few years ago, she used my notebook with Linux Mint and I had to set up and configure everything to enable her to switch the Keyboard between English and Hangul. Honestly, it didn’t work that great. I didn’t know what I was doing, because I never used a dual layout keyboard and she felt like switching layout was somehow strange and felt weird.

I thought maybe there is a distribution, that supports that out of the box. The only south korean distro I found is HamoniKR. Does someone have experience with it?

Or can someone recommend a distro that supports multiple keyboard layouts very well?

The OS language does not need to be Korean, english is totally fine. Only the keyboard layout should be easy to switch. I mostly use Debian based distributions. Therefore it would be the easiest for me to support, but something Redhat based should also work out.

Desktop wise, something similar to Windows as the default desktop would be nice. Cinnamon should work fine (seems to be HarmoniKR’s default) or KDE Plasma.

Thanks in advance for good your tipps and advices!

  • [object Object]@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    11·
    20 hours ago

    I don’t think I’ve seen a single distro that ships Korean support right off the bat, except HarmoniKR. Because of the way Korean works, it’s not just the keyboard layout support you need. To list the things you need to do:

    • Install Fcitx5.
    • Install Korean Fcitx5 input method. Probably named something like fcitx-hangul. Without it, Hangul keyboard will not appear in Fcitx.
    • Check what 한/영 key really does. This is necessary because depending on the hardware, it either emits Hangul key, or Right Alt. If it emits Hangul, then you can skip this. If not, make sure you remap Right Alt to Hangul, because then the key triggers Alt action every time language is swapped. Those usually steal input, so it is really annoying.
    • Add both Hangul keyboard (not Korean) and English keyboard in Fcitx5 config. Korean keyboard does not enter Korean characters. It’s the Hangul keyboard that actually enters Korean characters. It probably corresponds to Korean keyboard’s English input. It should look something like this.
    • Add Hangul key as Enumerate Input Method Forward option in Fcitx config under Global Options tab.

    I will attach my files in ~/.config/fcitx5. These two should go under that directory, and not ~/.config/fcitx.

    ~/.config/fcitx5/config 
    [Hotkey]
# Trigger Input Method
TriggerKeys=
# Enumerate when press trigger key repeatedly
EnumerateWithTriggerKeys=True
# Temporally switch between first and current Input Method
AltTriggerKeys=
# Enumerate Input Method Backward
EnumerateBackwardKeys=
# Skip first input method while enumerating
EnumerateSkipFirst=False
# Enumerate Input Method Group Backward
EnumerateGroupBackwardKeys=
# Time limit in milliseconds for triggering modifier key shortcuts
ModifierOnlyKeyTimeout=250

[Hotkey/EnumerateForwardKeys]
0=Hangul

[Hotkey/EnumerateGroupForwardKeys]
0=Control+Alt+Hangul

[Hotkey/ActivateKeys]
0=Hangul_Hanja

[Hotkey/DeactivateKeys]
0=Hangul_Romaja

[Hotkey/PrevPage]
0=Up

[Hotkey/NextPage]
0=Down

[Hotkey/PrevCandidate]
0=Shift+Tab

[Hotkey/NextCandidate]
0=Tab

[Hotkey/TogglePreedit]
0=Control+Alt+P

[Behavior]
# Active By Default
ActiveByDefault=False
# Reset state on Focus In
resetStateWhenFocusIn=No
# Share Input State
ShareInputState=No
# Show preedit in application
PreeditEnabledByDefault=True
# Show Input Method Information when switch input method
ShowInputMethodInformation=True
# Show Input Method Information when changing focus
showInputMethodInformationWhenFocusIn=True
# Show compact input method information
CompactInputMethodInformation=True
# Show first input method information
ShowFirstInputMethodInformation=True
# Default page size
DefaultPageSize=5
# Override Xkb Option
OverrideXkbOption=False
# Custom Xkb Option
CustomXkbOption=
# Force Enabled Addons
EnabledAddons=
# Force Disabled Addons
DisabledAddons=
# Preload input method to be used by default
PreloadInputMethod=True
# Allow input method in the password field
AllowInputMethodForPassword=False
# Show preedit text when typing password
ShowPreeditForPassword=False
# Interval of saving user data in minutes
AutoSavePeriod=30
    ~/.config/fcitx5/profile

    It contains Japanese group, you can safely delete that. I just don’t know what it looks like if I delete it.

    [Groups/0]
# Group Name
Name=日本語
# Layout
Default Layout=us
# Default Input Method
DefaultIM=mozc

[Groups/0/Items/0]
# Name
Name=keyboard-us
# Layout
Layout=

[Groups/0/Items/1]
# Name
Name=mozc
# Layout
Layout=

[Groups/1]
# Group Name
Name=한국어
# Layout
Default Layout=us
# Default Input Method
DefaultIM=hangul

[Groups/1/Items/0]
# Name
Name=keyboard-us
# Layout
Layout=

[Groups/1/Items/1]
# Name
Name=hangul
# Layout
Layout=

[GroupOrder]
0=한국어
1=日本語
  • lens0021@programming.dev
    18·
    2 days ago

    ​All Korean keyboards, including the one on my LG Gram (which is a Korean model), have a dedicated key for switching between English and Korean (the “한영키”). Everyone who isn’t technically inclined uses this key. Using Ctrl + Space is a bad user experience.

      • lens0021@programming.dev
        1·
        12 hours ago

        I assumed an ordinary person. My parents use the “한영키” to switch between Hangul and the alphabet. While I’m geeky enough to configure my Caps Lock key to function like that switch, most people wouldn’t even imagine that functionality is configurable.

    • ibot@feddit.orgOP
      5·
      2 days ago

      You’re right! I just checked and it was a dedicated key to switch the layout. That makes it easier!

      I think one thing that bothered my wife when she used my notebook was the keyboard shortcut to switch the language.

  • sjohannes@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I’ve tried two different setups for Hangul input.

    The first combination (GNOME+X11+IBus) just worked—it was trivial to setup from the GNOME Control Center and there were no issues that I could find. Last time I tried this was around a year ago but it had been working for years before that.

    The second combination (Plasma+Wayland+IBus) barely worked: I could enter characters but couldn’t add space or other symbols between characters, and settings were all over the place and would randomly stop working. Last tested ten minutes ago.

    I’ve heard people getting better results on Plasma+Wayland+Fcitx5 but it’s not something I’ve tried.

  • daggermoon@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 days ago

    I think KDE Plasma supports just about every keyboard layout in existence. It even supports the Esperanto layout, which I have never seen before. Pick a distro with Plasma and choose the right layout during setup.

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org
    2·
    2 days ago

    안녕하세요!

    i personally use slackware, nabi for xim imhangul-gtk2/3 for gtk and qimhangul-qt5 (peremen) for qt. meaning i don’t have korean input for qt6 or gtk4.

    ibus kinda seemed to work but had numerous glitches, same for fcitx but worse, uim made gtk2/3 programs hang. i’m honestly not sure how other korean users are doing it. i’ve heard good stuff about harmonikr, but not entirely sure how it’s much different from debian ubuntu etc.

    also ensure xkeyboard layout is korean and the Hangul key doesn’t identify as Alt_R in xev, some IMs don’t like it.

    • ibot@feddit.orgOP
      1·
      2 days ago

      Thx.

      Sounds like the setup can be quite complicated. ;)

      I might need to dive into that topic.

      • hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org
        1·
        2 days ago

        these days i’m thinking my setup is kinda weird, maybe slackware 15.0’s old glibc version is causing issues or something. i recommend you try debian or ubuntu’s latest version. ibus/fcitx/uim seems to be the most widely used choice. nobody seems to be using nabi or imhangul-gtk2/3…

  • DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    59·
    1 day ago

    Red star OS is best OS for democratic peoples Republic of Korea!

    By the way your next generation is going to be 34% the size of your current one. You guys got to take some time off work.

  • someacnt@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    Now, Mint should support the need decently enough, although it takes some setup. You can look up for language setup settings, I found that fctix works well nowadays.

    • ibot@feddit.orgOP
      1·
      2 days ago

      Sure, it always does.

      I’m fine choosing the best fitting distro from all these points mentioned in the post you linked.

      Unfortunately the post does not cover the only question I have: Is there a distro with specially good multi Keyboard layout support.

      For most people - including myself - this is never an issue, because they use only one layout. But especially people from countries with non latin alphabets really need this.

      • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
        1·
        8 hours ago

        Keyboard layout is a question of the desktop environment

        All distros and environments should support the same amount of regular layouts. A difference is how you switch between them. KDE allows me to use CAPSLOCK to switch, GNOME does not allow that so I use Alt+A.

        If you are talking about complex input methods like I guess korean uses, these will use a separate program. These will exist on all big distros but I never tried them.

        Arch Wiki entry

        This will likely exist on all distros you might encounter. They should all have a website to search for packages, which you can use before installing

        For example