No (working) virtual keyboard in Jammy using Wayland?

[tnarg42]

Is there any way to get a working virtual keyboard in Wayland? If not, this really needs to be highlighted in the release notes. I realize KDE has migrated to maliit for Wayland keyboard input, but the prior virtual keyboard system worked reasonably well in 20.04 LTS. The virtual keyboard on the login screen works fine, but once I'm booted into my desktop, I'm stuck. Due to tabletness, screen res, etc, it's not really practical to run X on my device (Surface Pro 5th-gen).

[claydoh]

Not really, since there are as of yet no other working/implemented keyboards for Plasma in Wayland, other than Maliit. I believe the one in SDDM (qtvirtualkeyboard) works since the login manager is actually still using xorg.
Mallit apparently may be a pain in the butt to build (I did try compiling it at some point, and gave up), and I don't know what the deal is with Qt's virtual keyboard, for Wayland. KDE Neon only somewhat recently added Maliit, so I don't know why Kubuntu didn't just 'borrow' the packaging setup for it.

When I was running 20.04 on my convertible laptop, I never had a working keyboard in Wayland at all, so I reverted to using crappy scripts for horribly slow Xorg screen rotation, and using Onboard. In other words, I rarely used the device in a non-laptop mode.

[rab0171610]

It's a security feature of Wayland LOL!! So no app or person can log your keystrokes!! I eventually see all these supposed security features for the desktop running on Wayland to be thrown aside in favor of usability. I don't get it.

[rab0171610]

I do not see why running X11 is not practical on a surface Pro. We have one in the house running Ubuntu with Gnome/X11 login by default and it works just fine. Way faster than windows. It looks like a tablet basically. Please explain why it is not practical to use X11. It works great. I do not see what the need for Wayland is. The issues with Wayland are well documented across the net. If you look at any Arch linux or Gentoo documentation on using Wayland they list ton of stuff to watch out for when switching, i.e. what will work and what will not. If you need things like screen recording or snapshots, virtual keyboards (we rely on onboard here) and a plethora of other things, then Wayland is not ready yet. Stick with what works until they figure it all out. If you were to look here:
https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers

Plasma/Wayland Showstoppers


This page tracks the Wayland showstoppers throughout the stack. Showstoppers are major bugs, or missing features affecting the Wayland session but not the X11 session. This is part of KDE's Wayland goal.

There is a list of things not working in Wayland that might affect some users.

Good Luck!

[claydoh]

Please explain why it is not practical to use X11

I don't have a Surface myself, but various convertibles, but these are issues that are solved by wayland:

Automatic screen rotation/tablet mode things. Xorg is terribly slow to rotate (at least on my hardware, it took ~5 seconds from the time I invoked the command or applied the setting in the GUI, with a blank screen the whole time), and requires scripting or other hardware-specific helpers to do so automatically. 90-degree rotation resolutions were odd for me, with poor font rendering or something making things look like **s. Absolutely none of that with wayland. Flip the screen, bang! it rotates. A caveat to this is Plasma's Tablet Mode detection doesn't cover all the different ways that different devices report this mode, so you may have to adjust a setting, and still potentially need to call the keyboard manually.

Plugging in a monitor with a lower refresh rate means *all* the screens are at the lower refresh rate in Xorg. This of course only matters if the laptop screen has a higher refresh and is being used at that setting. This can be worked around in Xorg iirc but takes some work. Works ootb in Wayland.

On convertible devices, Wayland is much better when using them in non-laptop modes. It is odd that Kubuntu missed adding the maliit keyboard, even if it mostly only supports Plasma applications etc currently.

I just last week sold my convertible Ideapad laptop, but I did replace it with a new convertible device, a Duet 5 Chromebook, as well as a Lenovo 10e Chrome OS tablet. Being Arm-based, they have whole other kettles of fish to fry, though both are able to run Linux, and I have had Plasma running on both.

[rab0171610]

Ok i get it now, our touch screen quit working and we do not rotate it so I was not aware of this issue with Xorg. Thanks for the explanation. As far as the issues with Wayland, I have experienced many so I cannot use it yet. I think a lot of it will get fixed in the next coming year, fingers crossed. We use ours just like a tablet/laptop and it stays propped up in its case. Hopefully you will find a solution that works for you. Again, thanks for the insight. It was very helpful.

[claydoh]

I switched to Wayland on my (former) laptop last summer, mainly for testing and trying to get tablet features working. Never switched back. On my dual monitor, semi-gaming-ish PC (i5/ an aging RX480), I switched last August. I really haven't had any issues or grumbles there at all, after maybe a month or two. I do experiment on my systems, and the main 'fights' I have are with Latte Dock (built from source, usually), which can be buggy in Xorg and Wayland, using it with unique layouts per Desktop Activity.


Of course, everyone is going to notice different things. and find things that are different, or 'broken', or whatever. But Wayland is worth checking out on occasion, maybe every few Plasma 'point' releases, and for sure with every major one.

[Melcar]

Well my Plasma desktop keeps crashing under Wayland, randomly it seems (or rather after opening and closing several windows). No idea why as the bug tracker thing on Kubuntu logs nothing useful. Also noticed a few issue with certain applications:

• Firefox and Thunderbird (particularly Thunderbird) sometimes suffer from rapidly flickering drop down and pop up menus which sometimes renders the application unusable.
• Right click menus in Dolphin sometimes close unexpectedly and sometimes even trigger certain random options. I have experienced more than once folders being moved to thrash bin as soon as I right click them, or being "cut" into the clipboard.

It's just not ready for me.