Description of problem: If you select Russian keyboard during the system installation it would be almost impossible to do a sane installation of Fedora. You will have russian layout selected as default, and no ways to switch to english layout, which means that: 1. You will not be able to enter a host name 2. You will not be able to enter a non-numeric password 3. You will not be able to enter anything in english during installation, like partition names and paths, etc. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda 12.46 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot fedora installation disk. 2. Select Russian keyboard when prompted. Actual results: It is not possible to enter English keys since there are no (at least obvious) ways to switch to English layout. Expected results: English layout as default, Russian layout as alternative, and a clear message describing how to switch layout during installation. Additional info: This gets more and more frustrating. It started at Fedora 10 at least as an insane default for the login screen after installation (see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=474010) and now even installation is broken.
anaconda always uses the default keyboard layout for the language as the primary layout to use during installation. However, we do add the US layout as a possibility as well for languages that have extra special keyboard layouts. Can you press down both the left and right shift keys at the same time and switch layouts that way? I'm told this is a common and well-known way to do keyboard layout switching, though I've never had to do it.
I've tried and found that switching with Shift-Shift does work during the installation, but there are at least several problems with that: 1. Switching with shift-shift is NOT advertised during the installation process. How would a new user guess this? I missed that combination because my VirtualBox had Right Shift configured as a Host key. 2. Non-latin layout as a default is NOT useful during the installation process, since you have to enter hostnames, partition names, etc. and they all are using latin characters. 3. There is no active keyboard layout indicator shown during the installation process. 4. Last but not least. Two most common key combinations to switch keyboard layouts at least in Russia are Alt-Shift and Ctrl-Shift (these were defaults on different versions of windows and dos). And almost no regular users know or use shift-shift.
Lev, Can you please start a discussion about this on the i18n mailing list: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-i18n-list If the consensus there is that we should change the default active layout for Russian (and maybe other) keyboards to the US layout, then we can take a look into doing so, but making such a policy decision should be done on the list. Regards, Hans
This is a 10 months old bug now. moving this to F14 to see if this is fixed already or not. Reporter please test this bug for f14.
Of course it is. The Shift+Shift is crazy combination in 2011, and it's not even written anywhere BTW.
As I know this issue has been fixed in F14 (or maybe early). (I'm using Russian layout in F14)
Just tested the Fedora 14 netinst cd, the bug is still here. Anaconda 14.22 Again, how to reproduce: 1. Boot fedora installation cd (netinst in my case). 2. Select install or upgrade existing system. 3. Skip disk check. 4. Click next 5. Select English language for installation, click next. 6. Select Russian keyboard, click next. 7. Choose anything in disk layout options 8. Try to enter hostname. At this step you get russian letters, while you should have an english keyboard layout switched on by default during the installation. Yes, it is now possible to switch the layout using Shift-Shift, but still a. It is still NOT documented. b. It is still stupid an useless For more details you can check discussion in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=474010 which explains why Russian (and some other languages as well) layout as default during installation is stupid and useless.
I think It's bug of documentation (incomplete) not anaconda. Shift-Shift is a default layout switcher in some distributions, it's not stupid. -- Fedora Bugzappers volunteer triage team https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers
The "stupid" part is in default layout which is useless during the installation, not in the keyboard shortcut. The computer is here to make your life easier by doing things that it can do for you. In this particular case the computer should make your life easier by selecting a sane default layout during the installation.
Is this same/similar bug or relevant to Bug#474010 (or that is)? it sounds like needing a solution at the lower layer, such as X11.
These bugs are related, of course. But solution is not at the lower level, this is just the matter of sane defaults in the configuration. Like: "if Russian keyboard is selected during installation, configure xkb to have two layouts, with default layout set to en_US, default layout switching sequence set to Alt-Shift (windows default) and display a message with a notice how to switch layouts. And also displaying an active layout indicator somewhere on screen would be nice.". That's all! No low level stuff at all!
If we are adding 'us' layout to 'ru' in anaconda ("ru,us") can we please add it before not after ("us,ru") in fact we should probably do this "everywhere"? Assuming this still the case for F16?
Yes, this apparently should solve the problem. And yes, this is still the case for F16.
anyone confirm if this is present in F17?
Still Shift+Shift, still no indicator.
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