The Soviet Union officially dissolved in 1991, but Russian language remained the region's lingua franca for decades. Many children of my generation were simultaneous bilinguals; we spoke both Azeri and Russian since childhood. I learned to type in Russian, but I never ever learned the official Windows Russian keyboard layout, because I didn't have a keyboard with Russian alphabet printed on it. The alternative was a phonetic layout, and I still remember a program called "Alt-Win", which allowed to select Azeri Latin, or Russian phonetic keyboard layouts in Windows 9x. Over the years, I used other tools in Windows XP and Windows 7 to recreate this layout. And then I moved to Linux.

In Linux, the only tool you need to create your own keyboard layout is a text editor. Would you like to find out how?