Problem
On Fedora KDE systems with Plasma desktop >= 6.6, the virtual keyboard “Plasma Keyboard” is enabled by default. This can cause various input issues even when not using the on-screen virtual keyboard, like letters repeating, disappearing, and others.
Usually, the virtual keyboard isn’t immediately obvious to the user as a cause. However, the issues are resolved when Plasma Keyboard is replaced with a different virtual keyboard (see “Workaround” below).
Cause
It’s not yet clear what the root cause is, or indeed whether a single fix would resolve all of these issues.
Related Issues
Specific identified issues and related links:
- VSCode keeps typing like the key has not been released
- see also KDE forum discussion (reported on Fedora and Arch; seems to affect Electron apps in general)
- When trying to rename a file, the filename disappears
- see also upstream KDE bug 517392
- see also KDE forum discussions [1], [2] (reported on Fedora and Arch)
- Dead key input fails on first character in Firefox
Workarounds
The Plasma Keyboard can be disabled in the KDE system settings application: go to Keyboard >> Virtual Keyboard, select “iBus Wayland” and click “Apply”.
This screen should allow the user to select no virtual keyboard at all. However, if you select “None”, the setting appears not to ‘stick’: i.e. when you go back to the screen, “Plasma Keyboard” appears to be selected again. (RHBZ bug 2448967.)
Some users have found selecting “None” nevertheless does clear the issue. However, “iBus Wayland” is likely the best workaround given the bug around selecting “None”.