How to configure the Colemak Keyboard Layout on Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 "Squeeze"

On Debian GNU/Linux Systems (>= 6.0 ) and derivates keyboard configuration is handled by the keyboard-configuration package:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

There is no need to deal with 'console-data' or 'xorg' anymore, keyboard layouts now for console and X11 are all handled by a unique program 'kbd' with 'kdb-data'.

All you need to set up a colemak layout at boot is to edit /etc/default/keyboard as follows:

XKBMODEL="pc104"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT="colemak"
XKBOPTIONS="lv3:ralt_switch"

Also using 'gdm3' instead of 'gdm' allows you to choose the keyboard layout at the graphical login prompt.