Linux on a laptop?

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Maybe gentoo

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I only recommend Kubuntu and/or Ubuntu these days. Head and shoulders above most of the crud.

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- system settings -> accessibility -> KHotKeys
- New Group, set the name to something like "accent keys". Then move the group
to the top (or into some appropriate folder, whatever you like)
- New Action,
- set the name to something appropriate, like F11-US-kbd
- set the Action type to "Keyboard Shortcut -> Command/URL (simple)
- make sure Disable is *not* checked
- under Keyboard Shortcut, click on the "none" button & then you can type the
key you want to use as the hotkey (e.g. F11)
- under Command/URL Settings, type in the name of the command to run. YOU
CAN'T provide options to the command so if your command needs options,
you'll have to put them in a script. So, for accents, my command is
/usr/local/bin/KB-INTL where KB-INTL is just this simple script file:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant alt-intl &>/dev/null

and to get the normal keyboard again, the command script is KB_US:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant basic &>/dev/null

- OK, apply all that and then check that the sw that runs hotkeys is running
- personal -> kde components -> service manager
make sure KMilo is checked under Startup Services

with kde 3.4.2 kubuntu systemsettings
- us_intl has been incorporated inside the us file as an "alt-intl" variant AND
in the system settings (the old control center) -> accessibility -> keyboard
layout, you only get to choose one variant. So you can't switch between
them. BLAH. NFG.
- SO.... the easiest thing to do is to map the change-keyboard commands onto
function keys (or any keyboard shortcut you like). The command to set the
accent keyboard is:
/usr/bin/setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant alt-intl
and the one for the regular keyboard is:
/usr/bin/setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant basic
(There's another variant, "intl" which does some (all?) of the accents &
maybe it'll work better than alt-intl, but I haven't tried it yet.)

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Ahh.. SWMBO had some such similar complaint -- it's the new X.org keyboard stuff that's different.

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She wanted to switch between standard and international ("accent keys") layouts on the fly, so we figured out a way to do it. Here's her cookie crumb trail:

My thanks to you and your SWMBO for the cookie crumb trail. Perhaps all I need to do is copy over the dvorak related files from the SuSE machine (I like being able to click the flag icon, since half the time it's my girlfriend that wants to be able to type, and I don't want to make her remember some arcane shortcut). If that fails, I'll be following the cookie crumb trail.

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The U.S.English (us) layout on my machine has a Dvorak "Layout variant" already, so you just need an easy way to switch between it and the regular layout.

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The KDE Control Center --> R&A --> Keyboard Layout menu has a drop-down menu for this purpose, or you could just use a one line shell script similar to SWMBO's to do it, without having to navigate all those menus.

I'll go the latter route, if necessary. I'm trying to find a way to be able to do it via point-n-click, since it's really going to be my girlfriend that needs it most of the time.

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I'm running KDE 3.5, which is newer than the stock Breezy KDE.
You also could upgrade to KDE-3.5 on Breezy, by adding this line to /etc/apt/sources.list: [...]

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If you do upgrade to KDE-3.5, one thing to note is that Kubuntu normally has their *own* menu item for System Settings, which is supposed to replace the KDE Control Center.

Noted. I had noticed that the "Control Center" was a bit different, but wasn't sure if that was just due to a setting I hadn't yet mucked with.