In plain vanilla dosbox I simply edit dosbox.conf with the following setting and the keyboard layout is changed.

keyboardlayout=dv103

However, in GOG's version of dosbox this setting is ignored. Is there a .conf file in another location? I'm using linux, IDK if that makes a difference.

Yes, most DOSbox GOG games have their own configuration. Which is why you might want to look into something like a launcher so you don't have to deal with problems like that.

hm... I am using the games .conf file. I don't know of another one. Attached is the location of the file I use, and I run it using start.sh.

That's a curious problem... is GOG maybe using an older version of DOSbox? You should be able to drop in the executable from the version that does work.

I found on another forum, sometimes you need to do:

[sdl]
usescancodes=false

and/or:

[autoexec]
keyboardlayout=dv103

I don't know what that does, but it works. Thanks for the replies.

Glad you got it sorted, it's a pity you can't mark your own post as the solution (or can you? I can't remember).

On the question if GOG is using an older version of DOSbox: Technically, yes. Nearly every one of the games is still ruunnng 74, rather than -2. Some are actually running even older versions.

FWIW, here's what GOG told me last week regarding DOSBox version :

"We are currently using the 0.74-2 version for new releases and when rebuilding old ones. Our Product Team is in contact with the DOSBox Team and the changes from 0.74-2 to 0.74-3 aren't significant enough to update our catalogue to it.
We will update the version of DOSBox when there are more significant changes, the 0.75 version if stable is one candidate for that.
In most cases you should be able to just replace the DOSBox directory with a never/different version (like an SVN build), make sure the executable is named like the older one and it should work."