Mmm.. My bet is that the keyboards are identical electrically, and only the keycaps differ. If that's the case, then.. where is the bit in the BIOS to toggle keyboard layouts? This cannot possibly be right, can it? It *is* a simple software-switch in Linux, to toggle between the two layouts (without actually changing the hardware).

Have you heard of other people having success (QWERTY-AZERTY) simply swapping keyboards?