Hi,
I have downloaded a slackware 14.1 iso (as it happens from the Irish mirror). I have checked the MD5 and used dd to transfer it to a usb stick.

When I reboot (from USB) I enter 1 at the appropriate stage to switch from a US keymap but I cannot see an IE Qwerty keymap in the available options - the nearest I can get is UK which for most purposes would be fine but it will not display the Euro symbol ( which is on the "4" key as well as the $) . Does anybody know if an IE keymap is available ?

Unfortunately, there is no Irish keymap in the "kbd" Linux package.

What you could do is create one yourself modify the uk one, that is /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/uk.map.gz.

Copy it somewhere, run "gunzip uk.map.gz". That command will output an uncompressed file uk.map that you can edit, as it's actually just a text file. When you are done, rename it "mv uk.map ie.map", gzip it like this: "gzip ie.map" and put it in its place as root: "cp ie.map.gz /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/".

You will find guidance to edit the map typing "man keymaps".

For the X keyboard the situation is better. Here are the available settings:

X Keyboard Layout: ie
X keyboard Variant: none needed[1]

[1]Available X keyboard Variants according to /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst:
CloGaelach ie: CloGaelach
UnicodeExpert ie: Irish (UnicodeExpert)
ogam ie: Ogham
ogam_is434 ie: Ogham (IS434)

As a bitmap font you can use terminus, ter-1* (covered codepage ISO8859-15 for new orthography)[2])
True Type Font: DejaVu Sans Mono (include the 80 glyphs needed)

[2]Old orthography needs ISO8859-14 because of these glyphs:
Ḃ, ḃ, Ċ, ċ, Ḋ, ḋ, Ḟ, ḟ, Ġ, ġ, Ṁ, ṁ, Ṡ, ṡ, Ṫ, ṫ
according to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-1
but can't you use the proposed workaround?

Thank you Didier,

I hadn't realised that the keyboard layout is set at two levels ; text mode login and X/graphical. Now I see what is meant when it is said that Slackware gives the user full control/ leads to a deeper understanding of Linux. My previous distros were all Debian based / Debian for which the installer generally resulted in a graphical mode login.

You of course correct - I can always use UK layout to install and switch to IE for X

IIRC, in Debian (or in Arch? I'm not sure) there is only one place to set the X keyboard layout, with something like a conversion table to map that to the kernel keymap. We don't have that in Slackware, that doesn't provide custom tools like console-setup. As you say, the plus side is that gives us the occasion to learn more about our system.

By the way I just contributed an article to SlackDocs, intended to help former users of other distributions to get acquainted with Slackware. Maybe you'll find it helpful.

Hi Didier
I looked at your article on SlackDocs and it does indeed look like it would help in transitioning to Debian. However i have decided to hold off for two reasons . 1) If I am honest , I am uneasy with the Church of the Subgenius / JR Dodds references which seems to pop up here and there on the forum. 2) I am not sure I have developed the skills yet to be able to run SlackBuilds/build my own packages from source.

Thanks , nevertheless, for your help.

Well, you made me find this article

AFAIK, only the name Slackware is derived from this "church" and personally I don't take all that much seriously. Oh and I don't take "serious" religions much seriously either, but that's another topic.

I didn't have either until recently, and that didn't prevent me to use Slackware. Anyway, just come back if/when you'll feel you are ready, we'll always be happy to help you get started.