Fix for keyboard layout resetting to US on every login after installing Zoom

For several months now, my keyboard layout would reset to English (US) every time I log into Plasma. I’ve tried every possible way to force it to my preferred layout, EurKey, but nothing worked: xorg.conf snippets, localectl configurations, it seemed Plasma simply ignored these settings.

At first I blamed Plasma, but it’s innocent: The problem is Zoom! The Zoom package contains an unnecessary dependency on IBus, at least in the RPM that Zoom packages for openSUSE. IBus comes with its own keyboard handling and is useful if you want to type text in Chinese, Japanese, Korean or other languages using non-Latin characters. But it also means that if you don’t configure IBus, your Plasma session will start with English (US) no matter what XKB keyboard layout you have set in Plasma.

The solution, at least until Zoom fixes their package, is to tell IBus to use your XKB keyboard layout. Right-click the IBus widget in the system tray and go to advanced preferences. Here, select “use system keyboard layout”. This will force IBus to use whatever is set via XKB.