After installation

Language

Systemwide

Edit the keymaps configuration

nano /etc/conf.d/keymaps

Set the keyboard layout and find or add this line:

keymap="de"

Replace "de" with your specific German variant if needed:

    de — Standard German
    de-latin1 — German (Latin 1)
    de-nodeadkeys — German without dead keys

Apply the changes

For the current session:

rc-service keymaps restart

For persistence, make sure the keymaps service is enabled:

rc-update add keymaps boot

Keyboard Layout within LUKS

Fixing Keyboard Layout During LUKS Password Entry on Gentoo

When you enter your LUKS password at boot, the keyboard layout defaults to QWERTY (us), not your systemwide German (de) layout. This is because the keymap is loaded after the initramfs runs. Solution: Set keyboard layout in the initramfs

You need to configure the initramfs to include the German keymap. On Gentoo, this depends on your initramfs generator.

For dracut (most common)

Edit /etc/dracut.conf.d/ or /etc/dracut.conf:

nano /etc/dracut.conf

Add or modify this line:

keyboard_layout="de"

Then regenerate the initramfs:

dracut -f