Nepali in Ubuntu

Typing

Romanized

Gnome

Getting romanized nepali in Ubuntu is piece of cake, as the layout is provided by default.

For Ubuntu 10.04 and up:

Go to System > Preferences > Keyboard
Under Layouts tab, click Add
Choose Nepal in the drop-down box and press add.
Click the language code in notification panel to change the layout. Or you can assign a shortcut in Layout Options tab.

For Ubuntu 9.10 and previous versions:

Add the Keyboard Indicator applet to the panel.

Right Click the panel
Choose Add to Panel
Add Keyboard Indicator under utilities

Now, add the Nepali layout to the applet.

Right click the applet (showing USA by default), and choose Keyboard Preferences
Under Layouts tab, click Add
Choose Nepal in the drop-down box and press add.

Click the applet to switch the language. Or you can assign a shortcut by by right clicking the applet > Keyboard preferences > Layout options.

KDE

Note: These apply to KDE4 as well

Click on the Application launcher on the bottom left screen,
Select System Settings
In Personal select Regional & Language
In Keyboard Layout, you can see the list of Available Layouts. Double click Nepal (np) and Click Apply.

This should automatically show a Keyboard Layout Switcher in the bottom right corner.

Firefox

If you type Nepali only inside Firefox, there's a nice plugin for that built by Suvash Thapaliya.

Get it from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11353/

Traditional

To type Nepali using traditional layout, you need to install SCIM as there's no layout for XKB (default in X). Go to Terminal and

$ sudo apt-get install scim scim-tables-additional

Now to activate scim as default input method,

$ im-switch -s scim

Now to run scim,

$ scim &

This should get a keyboard icon in the notification panel. Right click it > SCIM Setup. Under Global Setup, check Nepali.

Now while typing, Ctrl+Space should switch you the language.

To start scim everytime you start Gnome:

Go to System > Preferences > Sessions
Under Startup Programs, press Add
In New Startup Program dialog, put scim in command. Give it a name (say, SCIM Startup) and press OK

Localization

To get the menus and applications in Nepali, go to System > Administration > Language support and check Nepali. Log out and while you are at the login screen, select Nepali in Language.

Note that the localization of Ubuntu comes from Nepalinux Localization. And since packages aint identical in both, there are lots of unlocalized strings in Ubuntu.

Nepali Spelling checking

OpenOffice.org Writer

Get the Nepali dictionary (http://nepalinux.org/downloads/ne_NP_dict.zip) from OpenOffice Nepali Page
Extract ne_NP.aff and ne_NP.dic files and copy them to /usr/share/myspell/dicts
Edit /etc/openoffice/dictionary.lst and add the line

DICT ne NP ne_NP

Now enable it in Openoffice.org

Restart Openoffice.org. Close Quickstarter from notification area if it's enabled too..
Open Openoffice Writer
Go to Tools > Options > Language Settings > Languages
Check 'Enabled for complex text layout (CTL)'
Under CTL, choose Nepali (Nepal)

Firefox

Add Nepali Dictionary Plugin for Firefox from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9971.

More information on installation and usage are here