ubuntu-desktop depends on iBus, which is totally broken

[Daniele Varrazzo]

Upgrading from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04 the package iBus has been installed in the system and activated by default. This has caused an amount of pain because it has completely broken the input method (symptoms: no en-uk keyboard available composite not working, backtick to be pressed twice). The problems are reported in a number of places; I've read somewhere I can't remember that Unity has some form of workaround against ibus but I don't use Unity (using Awesome on some systems, lubuntu on another one) and other windows managers are affected.

Even disabling ibus (which has to be done via gnome-language-selector, instead of the keyboard panel in gnome-control-center, which is an usability problem that deserves its own bug report) the ibus processes keep on running. Probably this has no consequence but still there is no reason to have unwanted running processes. I have no idea where do these processes start, but I clearly have the idea that they shouldn't be running where not necessary.

Uninstalling ibus is not straightforward because the ubuntu-desktop package depends on it. The dependency the core package ubuntu-desktop on ibus is excessive for a package that is 1) unneeded by many users and 2) broken for many users.

The best solution to date is to:

    ibus exit
    sudo mv /usr/lib/ibus{,.bak}
    sudo mv /usr/bin/ibus{,.bak}

Please remove the dependency of ubuntu-desktop on ibus and avoid installing it for european languages.

[Daniele Varrazzo (daniele-varrazzo)]

The dependency is actually ubuntu-desktop -> unity-control-center -> ibus.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Thiago Martins (martinx)]

I would like to know why, WHY, for God's sake, that Ubuntu depends on this totally broken iBus?

Sabotage? I'm starting to believe on this conspiracy theory... :-/

What else can be?!

I'm glad that we still have a choice to remove iBus and use another solution, like scim, for example...

Out of topic but, can you guys imagine when this systemd-thing starts to break everything and we have no choice? Crazy times... ;-(

[Felix Moreno (info-justdust)]

ibus is failing with two keyboards in ubuntu 14.10 so I have to remove it using:
sudo apt-get remove ibus && sudo apt-get install scim
here it removes that...