Bug 480238

Summary:	When only one input method is installed, consider enabling it by default
Product:	[Plasma] kwin	Reporter:	Nate Graham <nate>
Component:	virtual-keyboard	Assignee:	KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Severity:	normal	CC:	kde
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability, wayland-only
Version First Reported In:	master
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Nate Graham 2024-01-23 17:20:33 UTC

Currently if the maliit-keyboard input method is installed, it is not actually enabled by default unless one of two things happens:
- The user goes to the Input Method KCM and manually enables it
- The distro pre-configures the system to have it enabled by default

As a result it is usually not actually enabled by default, causing numerous past complaints about the virtual keyboard not working.

Arguably this is a distro configuration issue. However it's one that we created ourselves by not doing this ourselves and instead leaving it up to distros, who we unfortunately know from experience often package KDE software in a non-ideal way. There's also the case of distros like Arch and Neon that have a formal policy of not configuring this kind of thing by default, causing their users to have a subpar experience unless we change what we do in our code.

We should consider enabling maliit-keyboard input method by default if it's installed and no other input methods are installed.

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2024-01-24 19:26:14 UTC

Would make sense to generalize this so that if only one input method of any kind is installed, it gets enabled by default (otherwise what's the point of installing it?). So this would cover the case where only Maliit is installed, and also avoid doing anything wrong in the case where the user has both Maliit and IBus installed and we don't know what to do.

Comment 2 David Edmundson 2026-01-22 22:35:03 UTC

We definitely need to improve the setup, but this would be a massive security hole, first one wins.

Now we have plasma-keyboard and plasma-setup we can do something better there.