Wayland, xmodmap and programmable keyboard or adaptor

[pauld]

I use xmodmap to define my keyboard layout.  I'm sure lots of other people here do the same, so I wonder how people (are planning to) deal with Wayland?  I'm being a bit lazy here because I haven't exactly investigated this exhaustively, but afaik the current situation is that Wayland does not support xmodmap.  It's also my impression - again, not exhaustively researched - that there is a drift towards Wayland by various distros, so my concern is that Wayland will be adopted before it's really ready to replace all of X's functionality.

A thing that really got me thinking was a serious computer failure a few weeks ago that ended up with me having to work in qwerty.  That was really hard: my base layout is dvorak so almost every key is different and I had to rummage through the junk pile to find an old keyboard to use.  Perhaps the best solution is to do the whole conversion thing that's currently handled by a slightly clumsy mix of alternative keyboard layout maps and xmodmap outside the computer.  I remember reading a few years ago about a device that was supposed to do exactly that: from memory it was vaguely like a usb pendrive that was powered by the computer and did the whole conversion, though I can't find it now.  Does anyone know of a solution to this?  I'm not really thinking of a big mess of stuff with a raspberry pi or whatever, needing a power supply - basically a whole extra computer to do one simple task.  I would like something small and neat and, ideally, easy to set up.

I don't really want to have to fall back on a programmable keyboard as I'm happy with the one I've got, plus it would presumably hugely reduce the choice of keyboards.  Or does this come down to having to build your own?

[pauld]

Funny how things can pass you by: I have just found TMK's usb convertor on this forum.  I don't know why a search didn't find it before.  It looks like that might be what I need.  Still interested in any feedback about how others deal with this issue.

[yui]

i think that hasu's TMK USB to USB converter would do exactly what you want, truth be told i use qwerty for that exact reason, i got too lazy to edit my layout in every distro i was trying and so learnt qwerty, so i never actually bothered checking what wayland can or can't do with kb and i think that now KDE at least is able to deal with that outside of xmodmap anyway, i would not be surprised if other DE can also remap keyboard inputs.

[blondie]

You can remap the keyboard at the kernel level. You don't need to do it at the GUI level, although it does seem that's the most popular solution. This might work for you:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/k3h9qv/remapping_keys_using_hwdb_files/

[Leslieann]

As Yui said, KDE allows some keyboard mods right in the D.E. configuration, no need to edit config files and such.

On my laptop I use that to tweak things and on my desktop I use programmable boards.

[pauld]

Thanks for the info - I did not know about the kernel level remapping via udev.  I have looked at the kde remapping but it seems too limited to achieve what I want.  I tend to use a standard layout on laptop which isn't as good but it does the trick and I don't use laptop all that much.  I have ordered TMK's convertor and hope that solves the problem.  Maybe one day I will try actually building a keyboard - when I have more time.  Whenever that might be!