Additional information to the manpage for english speaking users (written by Patrick Kursawe ): The XFree86 documentation (for 4.3 and later) contains the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc/README.XKB-Config where you can find information on how to use mutiple keyboard layouts. Xxkb has no own configuration section where you can specify the keymaps - just configure them for X and let xxkb switch between them.