Keyboard layout switching problems and poll

Great that you found a solution, @leschinsky.

@Norbert: You are aware of the difference between support and bug fixing/development, aren’t you? The Xorg issue you highlighted higher up in this thread is a valid feature request which you have called the developers’ attention to both via bug reports and here. But please note that there are a lot of keyboard shortcut and layout switching issues which are not related to that. Often a helping hand in some support forum is sufficient. There are a lot of such questions/answers at Ask Ubuntu, for instance.

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Unfortunately this fix only works until reboot :frowning: Currently I have to manually do this (launch CompizConfig Settings Manager and enable/disable Commands or any other feature - it reloads the top bar and the Dash, and keyboard shortcuts work after that. Another way is to run compiz --replace from Terminal - but again, this has to be done manually, I spent hours trying to make this automatic on reboot by adding to startup application or other places, but nothing seems to work - when executed from startup applications, it actually breaks the UI, there’s no header and no dash after executing this way. Why is that, any ideas? I also tried adding a shortcut to desktop, but double-clicking it on desktop has the same effect - broken UI. If, on the other hand, I run the same command by double-clicking from Files (Nautilus), it works! Why? It’s so frustrating…

Even after “fixing” it by running compiz --replace, it’s still not perfect - in WebStorm I cannot use my Alt+Shift+F7 shortcut anymore - the language switches, I guess because I pressed Alt+Shift, and F7 is ignored.

I really shouldn’t have upgraded… I need some painkillers now :wink:

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Sorry to hear that, but please understand that this is not the place to get help with the configuration of your machine.

I completely can’t understand for whom GNOME and Canonical develops / breaks GNU/Linux desktops.
Every computer for real work (not entertainment and gaming) has keyboard, the end-user uses it (with pre-installed and configured favorite shortcuts), but keyboard is broken (this thread as example).
If developers do not suppose Ubuntu to be real desktop system (to compete with RedHat or SuSe) - then it is not “The leading operating system for PCs, IoT devices, servers and the cloud | Ubuntu”, then it is OS for servers and for containers (not for end-users with GUI).
With such usability flaws I can recommend to remove and ignore GNOME (and beloved Unity too).
Currently only MATE DE can provide stable non-changing LTS user-experience without bells-and-whistles (thanks a lot, @Wimpress).

The universal remediation to fix current bug - do not use both GNOME sHell and Unity

and purge them with commands below:

sudo apt-get purge gnome-shell ubuntu-gnome-desktop \
ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-unity-desktop unity-session

sudo apt-get autoremove

but use Cinnamon, KDE, MATE (my favorite) or Xfce instead with packages from my PPA:

#Choose your favorite desktop 
#sudo apt-get install cinnamon-desktop
#sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop 
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-mate-desktop
#sudo apt-get instal xubuntu-desktop 

#Add my PPA
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nrbrtx/xorg-hotkeys
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

#Reboot and enjoy
sudo reboot

Optionally pin (lock/hold) related packages to prevent their upgrade with:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/pin-xorg-hotkeys
Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-nrbrtx-xorg-hotkeys
Pin-Priority: 1337
EOF

If you are not satisfied with obtained results - write a letter to Mark Shuttleworth / Xorg / GNOME / all bug-trackers / all IRCs / all LoCos / all treads of Ubuntu-Forums / Bill Gates about your problem and then execute:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:nrbrtx/xorg-hotkeys
sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/pin-xorg-hotkeys
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Thanks a lot Norbert, I’ll try MATE - I love Unity, I don’t understand why it’s discontinued, GNOME is buggy (I cannot mirror my 4K monitor to 4K TV and set scale to 200% on gnome, thankfully it works on Unity) and inefficient - both the top bar, AND current window title bar, AND the menu are displayed at the top of the screen taking way too much space there, which is a clear step backwards. I’ll report the bug on proper resources too, thank you for explanation and for trying to help. I literally wasted 10 hours yesterday, so frustrating. Спасибо :slight_smile:

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The custom keyboard shortcuts bug is in unity-settings-daemon. But very hard to reproduce. It has some connection with the bug in this thread, key press vs key release. If I downgrade xorg everything works fine.

How do you downgrade xorg? Please pretty please, I’m so annoyed by this :slight_smile: Everything else is smooth and great now, this stupid keyboard thing is the last glitch that if I fix it, I’ll be a happy Linux user once again :slight_smile:

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Thanks! Works well:
Release Linux Mint 19 Tara 64-bit
Kernel Linux 4.15.0-36-generic x86_64
MATE 1.20.1

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Faced the same issue in Unity after upgrading from 16.04 to 18.04. Have the same question: how do I downgrade Xorg to fix this?

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Found a partial solution for GNOME but not for Unity yet.

Man, you’re a hero! I’ll buy you a beer :slight_smile:
Thanks a lot!

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What an asshole :frowning:

The bug itself and the way it is being ignored look like a huge shame of the whole Ubuntu developers community.

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Using Elementary OS 5.0 and having all the same problems. Solution mentioned by @Norbert does not work (as he said earlier) because Pantheon DE is based on GNOME.

This is just unbelievable how it is possible in real life - not to fix this SERIOUS bug for 14+ years. Because handling key combinations on key press is totally incorrect, even every web developer know this. Because Ctrl+Shift and Ctrl+Shift+F is two different key combinations which simply must not and should not be conflicting in any way.

Workaround mentioned by @solarpatrol does not work either, because pantheon’s key shortcuts can’t be set using gnome-tweak tools.

As @Norbert said in xorg865 bug thread. 14 years of doing nothing…
How can even anyone hope about any *nix distro becoming mainstream, if such critical bugs aren’t fixed for DECADES

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Please somebody tell us whether using MATE with fore-mentioned patch still suffer from such problem: using ctrl-shift-smth combinations works as expected but ALSO switch layout?
This happens with me in GNOME after patch from kyak so Ubuntu is still remains almost unusable((

Finally I checked this myself: On MATE desktop everything works ok.

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I had the same problem
Appeared at the first screen lock. On the locked screen, the keyboard does not switch the layout at all. Just the mouse. But after unlocking the combination Shift-Alt is installed instead of Alt-Shift

While disabled lock, but the blocking feature is a useful thing.

LTS release is approaching. Is there a chance that this critical bug will be addressed?

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Personally I’m ready. I have tested packages from my PPA on opcoming 20.04 LTS -

But it will not work on GNOME, so I’ll recommend to ignore GNOME and switch to other DE like Xfce , MATE or KDE.

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Personally I think that you should switch the distro, not just the DE. I think that the Devuan or Slackware communities deserve your valuable input.

That’s the beauty of open source: you can freely go wherever you want to.

I guess the answer to this question is no, the critical bug won’t be addressed… ((

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