Dvorak

This is a guide that describes how to use Dvorak keyboard instead of traditional Qwerty. Qwerty keyboard was designed to prevent that the keys crash into each other on typewriters. This is not necessary any more, so Dvorak keyboard was designed to speed up writing.

1 Configure Dvorak keyboard for the console

To temporarily change keyboard configuración for the console type:

loadkeys dvorak

If you have a Dvorak keyboard in another language not included on:

/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak

you can make a copy of any of the files at that same directory and change its name.

cp /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak/dvorak.map.gz /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak/dvorak-es.map.gz

Then, uncompress the file.

gunzip /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak/dvorak-es.map.gz

and edit the uncompressed file.

nano /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak/dvorak-es.map

Then compress it back.

gzip /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak/dvorak-es.map

To change permanently the keyboard layout change

KEYMAP=dvorak-es

at /etc/rc.conf

2 Configure Dvorak keyboard for X

The keyboard layouts that are available for X are listed at /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst

To configure the keyboard layout temporarily for Xorg:

setxkbmap dvorak es