Get German keyboard with English user interface

To get an English UI with German keyboard, I followed the Void wiki and did:

• Become root

  sudo su -
  

• Edit /etc/default/libc-locales, uncomment the wanted locales in the system

  sed -i -e 's/^#de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8/de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8/g' /etc/default/libc-locales
  sed -i -e 's/^#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/g' /etc/default/libc-locales
  

  Of course you can use the editor of your choice in doing so.

• Write /etc/locale.conf and set everything to German, except LANG and LC_MESSAGES

  cat << __EOF__ > /etc/locale.conf
  LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_CTYPE="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_COLLATE=C
  LC_MONETARY="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_PAPER="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_NAME="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_ALL=
  __EOF__
  

• Rebuild locales

  xbps-reconfigure -f glibc-locales
  exit
  

Now, there are the Umlauts in qterm, xterm and the "real TTY" aka ALT+F2. This should probably work with other combinations of locales, too.

Display Manager

Project trident uses as display manager and right now it only supports an us keyboard in the login screen.

• To change that to a German keyboard, become root

  sudo su -
  

• Insert a line in one of the sddm startup scripts

  grep --quiet setxkbmap /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup || echo 'setxkbmap de' >> /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup
  # validate
  cat /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup
  #!/bin/sh
  # Xsetup - run as root before the login dialog appears
  setxkbmap de
  

• Reboot the machine.

Now you are greeted with a little German flag and keyboard layout.