HOWTO select keyboard layout in Debian

# dpkg-reconfigure console-data

You can select even Mac layouts

If you don't wanna use the ncurses utility consider that all the keyboard layouts are stored under /usr/share/keymaps

For example if you wanna load the /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/it.kmap.gz

# loadkeys it

Use only the name without .kmap.gz