Comment 11 for bug 1302770

Right, the good reason for appending the 'us' group is having shortcuts work with non-latin layouts.
https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/utopic/unity-settings-daemon/utopic/view/head:/plugins/keyboard/gsd-keyboard-manager.c#L816
I guess bug #1218322 is what happens when that fails.

Unfortunately for us, that behavior is plain hard coded in gnome/unity-settings-daemon. I don't see a way to select the 'it' layout without getting the 'us' one tacked on, even though both are latin layouts. I'd still say it's difficult to maintain this is a bug in u-s-d. What we really need is a fix for the unexpected group switches, rather than stopping u-s-d/g-s-d from setting up multiple groups. That would have just been nice to have as another workaround. I'll duplicate this one to the X bug #837456 then, that's the best I currently have.