German Umlauts on US-Keyboard on (K)Ubuntu

Use case

As a software developer I prefer using keyboards with US-layout. Mainly because special characters (like []{}\|<>) are more easy to write/reach – some even without a modifier.
But, for email and stuff, I still rely on German Umlauts.

Solution

So this is what I did do use German Umlauts even with US-keyboard.

Create a .Xmodmap file in your home directory

nano .Xmodmap

And add following lines:

keycode 108 = Mode_switch
keycode 26 = e E EuroSign EuroSign e E
keycode 30 = u U udiaeresis Udiaeresis u U
keycode 32 = o O odiaeresis Odiaeresis o O
keycode 38 = a A adiaeresis Adiaeresis a A
keycode 39 = s S ssharp ssharp s S

Conclusion

That’s it. Now you can access both the lower- and upper-case Umlauts by using the right ALT key.

If you don’t want to restart your X-server to see the changes you can re-import the xmodmap settings as follow (again in your home directory):

xmodmap .Xmodmap