Hey there!
My (Korean) wife’s notebook, an older LG gram, does not support Windows 10 anymore and I could convince her to switch to linux.
A few years ago, she used my notebook with Linux Mint and I had to set up and configure everything to enable her to switch the Keyboard between English and Hangul. Honestly, it didn’t work that great. I didn’t know what I was doing, because I never used a dual layout keyboard and she felt like switching layout was somehow strange and felt weird.
I thought maybe there is a distribution, that supports that out of the box. The only south korean distro I found is HamoniKR. Does someone have experience with it?
Or can someone recommend a distro that supports multiple keyboard layouts very well?
The OS language does not need to be Korean, english is totally fine. Only the keyboard layout should be easy to switch. I mostly use Debian based distributions. Therefore it would be the easiest for me to support, but something Redhat based should also work out.
Desktop wise, something similar to Windows as the default desktop would be nice. Cinnamon should work fine (seems to be HarmoniKR’s default) or KDE Plasma.
Thanks in advance for good your tipps and advices!
I don’t think I’ve seen a single distro that ships Korean support right off the bat, except HarmoniKR. Because of the way Korean works, it’s not just the keyboard layout support you need. To list the things you need to do:
- Install Fcitx5.
- Install Korean Fcitx5 input method. Probably named something like
fcitx-hangul. Without it, Hangul keyboard will not appear in Fcitx. - Check what 한/영 key really does. This is necessary because depending on the hardware, it either emits Hangul key, or Right Alt. If it emits Hangul, then you can skip this. If not, make sure you remap Right Alt to Hangul, because then the key triggers Alt action every time language is swapped. Those usually steal input, so it is really annoying.
- Add both Hangul keyboard (not Korean) and English keyboard in Fcitx5 config. Korean keyboard does not enter Korean characters. It’s the Hangul keyboard that actually enters Korean characters. It probably corresponds to Korean keyboard’s English input. It should look something like this.
- Add Hangul key as Enumerate Input Method Forward option in Fcitx config under Global Options tab.
I will attach my files in
~/.config/fcitx5. These two should go under that directory, and not~/.config/fcitx.~/.config/fcitx5/config[Hotkey] # Trigger Input Method TriggerKeys= # Enumerate when press trigger key repeatedly EnumerateWithTriggerKeys=True # Temporally switch between first and current Input Method AltTriggerKeys= # Enumerate Input Method Backward EnumerateBackwardKeys= # Skip first input method while enumerating EnumerateSkipFirst=False # Enumerate Input Method Group Backward EnumerateGroupBackwardKeys= # Time limit in milliseconds for triggering modifier key shortcuts ModifierOnlyKeyTimeout=250 [Hotkey/EnumerateForwardKeys] 0=Hangul [Hotkey/EnumerateGroupForwardKeys] 0=Control+Alt+Hangul [Hotkey/ActivateKeys] 0=Hangul_Hanja [Hotkey/DeactivateKeys] 0=Hangul_Romaja [Hotkey/PrevPage] 0=Up [Hotkey/NextPage] 0=Down [Hotkey/PrevCandidate] 0=Shift+Tab [Hotkey/NextCandidate] 0=Tab [Hotkey/TogglePreedit] 0=Control+Alt+P [Behavior] # Active By Default ActiveByDefault=False # Reset state on Focus In resetStateWhenFocusIn=No # Share Input State ShareInputState=No # Show preedit in application PreeditEnabledByDefault=True # Show Input Method Information when switch input method ShowInputMethodInformation=True # Show Input Method Information when changing focus showInputMethodInformationWhenFocusIn=True # Show compact input method information CompactInputMethodInformation=True # Show first input method information ShowFirstInputMethodInformation=True # Default page size DefaultPageSize=5 # Override Xkb Option OverrideXkbOption=False # Custom Xkb Option CustomXkbOption= # Force Enabled Addons EnabledAddons= # Force Disabled Addons DisabledAddons= # Preload input method to be used by default PreloadInputMethod=True # Allow input method in the password field AllowInputMethodForPassword=False # Show preedit text when typing password ShowPreeditForPassword=False # Interval of saving user data in minutes AutoSavePeriod=30~/.config/fcitx5/profileIt contains Japanese group, you can safely delete that. I just don’t know what it looks like if I delete it.
[Groups/0] # Group Name Name=日本語 # Layout Default Layout=us # Default Input Method DefaultIM=mozc [Groups/0/Items/0] # Name Name=keyboard-us # Layout Layout= [Groups/0/Items/1] # Name Name=mozc # Layout Layout= [Groups/1] # Group Name Name=한국어 # Layout Default Layout=us # Default Input Method DefaultIM=hangul [Groups/1/Items/0] # Name Name=keyboard-us # Layout Layout= [Groups/1/Items/1] # Name Name=hangul # Layout Layout= [GroupOrder] 0=한국어 1=日本語Annyeong haseyo!
Can’t go wrong with Debian.
True! Most stable system I ever used.
All Korean keyboards, including the one on my LG Gram (which is a Korean model), have a dedicated key for switching between English and Korean (the “한영키”). Everyone who isn’t technically inclined uses this key. Using Ctrl + Space is a bad user experience.
You’re right! I just checked and it was a dedicated key to switch the layout. That makes it easier!
I think one thing that bothered my wife when she used my notebook was the keyboard shortcut to switch the language.
ctrl space is very useful if you have many keyboard layouts
Red star OS is best OS for democratic peoples Republic of Korea!
By the way your next generation is going to be 34% the size of your current one. You guys got to take some time off work.
What? I never heard that OS before though I am living in Korea. What are the pros of the OS? Does it have a native support for Kakao Talk?
Oh it’s a joke. Red star OS is a Linux distro made by the North Korean government. It’s most definitely has spyware in it. Probably not as much as American companies but it does contain spyware and I think it takes a picture of your screen every so often like copilot does.
Mine is also a joke. KakaoTalk, the most used massenger app in South Korea does not support Linux, a Wine approch is half-broken, and a WIP reverse-engineered Typescript & Rust based open-source client is not yet fully developed and never.
I would avoid using stuff that goes out of its way to not support Linux. I guess it’s popular. Most things do work under Linux once you figure out how to use it. You have proton, wine, and VMs and containers if the former don’t work.
I think you may have replied to the wrong person though I was the one replying about red star OS the North Korean Linux distro
