Comment 17 for bug 425881

From my experience, the bug started appearing on Maverick, when the default behaviour of the iBus language bar was changed to "embedded" instead of "when active", and hasn't disappeared since. Changing the setting to "when active" in the iBus preferences does not always make the language bar come up when iBus is active. A workaround, which termporarily fixes the issue for me, has been to click on the iBus panel icon and select "restart" from the context menu. When iBus has restarted, the language bar behaves properly. The issue reappaears after a reboot of Ubuntu, though.

I have so far observed this problem on every Ubuntu installation I have set up for myself or friends. I suppose most people don't bother changing the panel's default behaviour in the preferences, and restarting the daemon from the panel menu is uncomplicated. But from my experience, this is a major dealbreaker for Asian users.