When typing into a plasma window it accepts like every 100th key press. When searching in kickoff, it accepts the first letter, then the rest of the typing goes into the void, but it randomly accepts about every 100th key press. The run command popup on the other hand doesn't accept the first letter, it just seems to be unresponsive, but after several seconds of button mashing it randomly accepts a letter, then it's unresponsive again for another 100 key press.
Which distribution are you using? I am pretty sure this issue is on your side. If it was reproduced by any other user, we would have heard of it. Please try: - freshly created user account - live CDs from the same distribution - live CDs from a different distribution
I'm using Debian Unstable. I'll try the things you proposed.
Any progress with comment #2?
I think I've found out the cause of the issue: I have ibus installed, so I have the *_IM_MODULE environment variables, but ibus-daemon is not running. It doesn't start automatically for some reason, but if I start it manually, this keyboard issue in plasma goes away. Now I know you are tempted to close this bug as PEBKAC, but I'd like to remind you that plasma is the only thing that goes haywire by this setup.
There certain is a problem somewhere. But it's difficult to report a bug with the keyboard not working :-) In my case, after working well for a while the keyboard stops working normally in all KDE applications, with the same symptoms as reported under #1. Non-kde applications work fine (chromium yes, libo yes, kate no, kickoff no). Replugging the keyboard (usb) also does not help. I didn't find how to get ibus restarted and removing it wants to remove a lot of other packages so I didn't want to go there. I am on Kubuntu 17.10, upgraded to Kubuntu backports but that had no effect. I did manage to get the keyboard working again by going to systemsettings, systemd and rerun keyboard-setup.service (this reruns the one-shot /lib/console-setup/keyboard-setup.sh)
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 376966 ***