FCITX crashes the system when switching keyboard layouts on Mint 22.3

[khruschevite]

Distribution

22.3

Package version

6.6.4

Graphics hardware in use

GTX 750 ti

Frequency

Always

Bug description

If I open FCITX configuration, remove all languages except for Keyboard - English(US), and add another layouts in keyboard settings (in my case Russian and Japanese MOZC), whenever I try to change keyboard layout with FCITX open the entire system freezes with only mouse moving around and nothing working, forcing me to restart PC. Both exiting FCITX and putting "Keyboard - A user-defined custom Layout" in FCITX Configuration fixes the issue but I don't think that's an intended solution.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open FCITX
2. Go to configuration
3. Only have Keyboard - English(US) Input Method in the list
4. Go to Keyboard settings
5. In Layouts, add non English layouts (ex. Japanese, Russian)
6. Change the layout with FCITX open (super+space by default)
7. The system crashes

Expected behavior

The layout switches without crashing

Additional information

Putting "Keyboard - A user-defined custom Layout" at the top of FCITX Input Methods fixes the issue

[leigh123linux]

cinnamon doesn't support fcitx, use ibus instead. install ibus-mozc, reboot

[khruschevite]

Oh it wasn't really clear that Cinnamon doesn't support it since the Input Method screen still says to change to Fcitx framework. Changing it to IBUS also seems to have solved the issue of japanese input not working anywhere but start menu, thanks.

[clefebvre]

cinnamon doesn't support fcitx, use ibus instead. install ibus-mozc, reboot

Fcitx is recommended in Linux Mint 22.3 (it works better for Mozc than IBUS). Also it's an issue for Cinnamon to freeze or crash if Fcitx is being used.

Do you see anything in .xsession-errors? or in the crash reports?

@mtwebster is this reproducible?

[khruschevite]

Nothing in Crash Reports and xsession-errors doesn't seem to be showing before rebooting either. Not sure if it even registers it as a crash because I can technically move my mouse but everything else is just frozen

[mtwebster]

I can't reproduce this - no crash/freeze. But I'm not sure what you're expecting to happen with only a single language in the fcitx configuration.

Have you cleared Cinnamon's switching shortcuts before doing this? By default they also use super+space. Click on them and hit 'backspace' to clear them:

[Foxtrot68]

Stumbled upon this issue having just upgraded to Mint 22.3 from 21.3, with default shortcuts it was a guaranteed crash, changing shortcuts let it work briefly but still crashes cinnamon after a few seconds. I've added the different input methods and layouts in Fcitx and Keyboard settings as seen below. Reproduction worked the same as original post, switching from a non english layout to another one (this case brazilian portuguese) with Super+Space then Super+Shift L.

[khruschevite]

I managed to fix the crashes by uninstalling fictx and installing fcitx5 from software manager, works well enough

[Foxtrot68]

Appreciate the suggestion, fcitx5 + fcitx5-mozc both work perfectly, there's no crashes now on switching layouts. Keyboard settings program on Mint still wants to interface with the uninstalled fcitx so its layouts "configure" button is grayed out, but as long as there's no crashes I'm glad it works now.

[janos-r]

I just created the possibly related
#13622

In my case it doesn't crash, but I didn't put mozc (ibus) into the keyboard layouts. Isn't it crashing just because you are trying to uses ibus (from the keyboard layouts) and fcitx at the same time? That inherently doesn't make much sense.
A) If you want to use ibus, have it set in the input method app as the default method, set the methods (mozc) in the keyboard app and never run fcitx again.
B) If you want to use fcitx, have that in the input method app as the default, set different keyboards in the fcitx config, and never use the keyboard layout app or it's shortcuts (have just your one default layout there).

When using ibus, when I start fcitx5, it actually removes ibus-mozc from the keyboard layout. Fcitx5 is clever that way (even though the user is not clever to attempt that in the first place). Maybe the old fcitx doesn't do that and then it crashes.

In my issue above, I recommend to the devs switching from fcitx to fcitx5 in the Input method app install button. I assume that would solve this issue as well.

[dabajabaza]

Experienced the same issue.
Fixed it by switching from fcitx to ibus.
While troubleshooting, I found that when the system froze, I was still able to log into a TTY session. htop showed Xorg consuming nearly all CPU resources.

My setup:

OS:  Linux Mint 22.3 Zena (Ubuntu 24.04 base)
CPU: Intel Core i7-13700H (14-core, Raptor Lake)
GPU: NVIDIA RTX A1000 6GB (driver 590.48.01)
RAM: 32 GiB
DE:  Cinnamon 6.6.7