Bug 396554 - Choosing Cyrillic, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and other keyboard layouts in KDE neon gitunstable installer makes system not installable
Summary: Choosing Cyrillic, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and other keyboard layouts in KDE n...
Status: REPORTED
Alias: None
Product: neon
Classification: KDE Neon
Component: Live/Install images (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Neon Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Neon Bugs
URL:
Keywords: triaged
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2018-07-16 06:13 UTC by RussianNeuroMancer
Modified: 2024-01-15 11:32 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

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Description RussianNeuroMancer 2018-07-16 06:13:37 UTC
KDE neon devunstable installer bug: choosing Cyrillic, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and other keyboard layouts, cause English keyboard layout to disappear, and makes system not installable, because it's became impossible to set username and password.

While it's possible to workaround this issue by launching installer in Live mode and adding English keyboard layout back, and then set username and password, English keyboard layout is still not present after installation, which make login impossible, unless user enabled autologin in installer. I think this will cause huge frustration to users and makes them cancel installation (which I did, when I tried to install Manjaro).

Another possible pain point is CJK input methods which probably doesn't get installed and enabled, even if user chosen Vietnamese or Korean - I wonder if anybody from developers team check this? Please refer to this articles for more details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_input_methods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language_and_computers#Text_input
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_input_methods_for_Unix_platforms
Comment 1 Denis Zhdanov 2020-08-11 15:13:24 UTC
Problem persists in recent 20.04 release (neon-user-20200810-1423 image).
Comment 2 Avihay 2023-12-24 08:47:34 UTC
This problem persists in neon-user-20231221-0716.iso 's installer

my story:
boot, run the installer, see what happens  when switching to hebrew as installer language (the installer doesn't switch to an RTL layout)
continue to select keyborad layout, I'm suggested with Hebrew. cant type English username, go to system settings, adds layout us
installation done, reboot, can't login. no language selector, pulling hairs out, sees that the password text field  layout is RTL open virtual keyboard and login.
go to system settings, adds layout us, set as first layout, reboot.
reboot, can't login. no language selector, pulling hairs out, sees that the password text field  layout is RTL open virtual keyboard and login.
remembers that Linux uses xkb and kde adds something(like layouts) on top of it.
go to archwiki, set xkb to "us,il" reboot, success!!!

not something a beginner would know, and still frustrating to me
Comment 3 Carlos De Maine 2023-12-26 05:38:56 UTC
not my area of knowledge but am willing to learn as multi language support is important.  

which parts of the stack are needed to be installed on the live image to be able to support multiple keyboard layouts and so forth??

we already package fcitx5, fcitx5-qt, fcitx-qt5 but at present they are not pre-installed.

should neon be providing keyboard layout defaults like are detailed in the arch wiki ?? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Linux_console/Keyboard_configuration
Comment 4 Avihay 2024-01-15 08:27:38 UTC
@Carlos De Maine
You only need the set of xkb packages, which are already on the image and installed for the live environment and installed environment.
The installer should just not remove the US language, when picking non-English layouts.
Maybe some handling should be included for non-qwerty layouts
And I prefer it if it keeps US as the primary/first xkb language.
As far as I know, this has consequences when working with non-graphical  virtual console too (ctrl+alt+?shift?+f1-f??).

Currently, changing the layout in the installer makes the installer break. Fixing English in the Live-CD environment with the KDE settings applet, won't prevent the installer from removing US on the installed to HDD version, which means you can't login with the keyboard, if the password is in English. The login virtual keyboard is stuck in only English, so I managed to log-in, which highlights another bug...

From a quick search, I don't thing fcitx5 effects the non-graphical  virtual console, and that's still something the user could do later
Comment 5 Yaron Shahrabani 2024-01-15 11:32:22 UTC
Avihay, let me try and explain it in another way:
The user should ALWAYS have the option to write in English somehow; changing the layout in an irreversible way may block the next installation steps as the username must be lowercase Latin letters (not to mention password, hostname, etc.).