As I continue exploring Cinnamon 2.0 features (on openSUSE 13.1) I noticed the keyboard layout setting wouldn’t function as expected. For some weird reason I couldn’t add Hindi (Bolnagri) layout although this is present in the GNOME session. I also tried setting it up using gnome-control-center instead of Cinnamon settings but didn’t work.

A little bit of Google search & I found many people reporting the issue. Some folks resorted to adding their required keyboard layout directly to the X11 configuration. Well … it could do the trick but I was looking for something less system-wide. My search then led me to the following setting using setxkbmap.

setxkbmap -layout "us,fr,in(bolnagri)" -option "grp:alt_shift_toggle"

Upon running it adds English (US), French and Indian (Hindi/Bolnagri) layouts in the order as specified. To get it launched at login we just need to include the command & parameters in Cinnamon’s startup programs.

Open Cinnamon-settings ($ cinnamon-settings) & click on Startup Programs.

Click Add and specify a name & the command parameters.

Re-login into Cinnamon and you should find the shiny keyboard layout applet on the bottom-right.