Just how easy is it to “get going” on Qubes OS if you need additional locales, languages, and most importantly, keyboard input methods installed?
I’d be particularly interested in hearing from anyone who uses Qubes OS in:
Sub-continental scripts (any and all)
อักษรไทย (Thai)
ግዕዝ (Ethiopian)
αλφάβητο (Greek)
ອັກສອນລາວ (Lao)
དབུ་མེད་ (Tibetan)
རྫོང་ཁ (Dzongkha)
漢字/汉字 (Chinese)
الفبای فارسی (Farsi)
אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי (Hebrew)
Հայոց գրեր (Armenian)
한글 (Korean)
書 (Japanese)
მხედრული (one of the Georgian scripts)
кирил(л) (Cyrillic)
ខ្មែរ (Khmer)
မြန်မာအက္ခရာ (Burmese)
…and anything else I haven’t mentioned
Questions
Does the current vanilla Qubes OS installer ISO come with everything you need to be able to input your desired language’s script?
If not:
Did you need to install extra things?
If so:
What did you install?
Why that particular thing?
Where did you install it (eg. dom0, sys-usb,sys-input,regular qube, etc.)?
Do they work satisfactorily?
If not:
What issues are faced when trying to get them working?
What could be done to make it easier/better?
What caused this question to be asked...?
This came about from a post by @ccaccaia about the fact that there are definitely some issues faced by some Qubes OS users out there that this forum currently isn’t able to assist with.
I’ll post some context in a collapsible drop-down after this post, so if you don’t have any personal experience in what I’m talking about and need some context, it should be somewhere down there
I don’t use the languages you listed. AFAIK dom0 bosses domains around with keyboard inputs. As long as receiving programs can handle character sets you want to use, everything will go comparatively smoothly. Biggest issue right now is the delay when switching layouts. Layout changes somewhat fast when hotkey is pressed, but there is a hefty delay after layout is changed before you can change it back: this makes writing text that contains small pieces of different languages quite slow and annoying.
Does the current vanilla Qubes OS installer ISO come with everything you need to be able to input your desired language’s script?
Depends on the language.
“Simple” character sets (Latin-based, Cyrillic, etc., basically all sets with small amount of symbols) don’t require installing anything at all, just changing keyboard settings. Maybe installing a font or two in templates.
Logograph-based languages (like Chinese and Japanese, and I think Thai and Korean use similar software as well) require installing additional packages (this is a generic thing in linux, not just Qubes) in dom0 or templates and may need fonts. Unfortunately I don’t remember what packages you need, nor do I know language-specific details for your set . I think it is ibus-pinyin for chinese and similar packages for other languages.
Correct. ibus-pinyin does work, when it’s installed inside the AppVM.
However, I would imagine that more users would gravitate towards Sogou, because it’s what they know. It’s what they see on other computers.
(I’m not suggesting that this be included in the standard install. Quite the opposite, actually.)
This is one of the reasons why I’m asking is:
Some of the solutions that provide character input could potentially do quite a lot of spying
Clipboard snatching, keystroke logging/injection, general other shenanigans
A lot of the “solutions” provided by the community might seem unfamiliar to new users, given that their “tool of choice” might not function as expected, or not at all.
A lot of whatever most users regularly use might have extra functionality, predictive text, etc.; and that might be a deal-breaker for some users
I don’t think many users would welcome the idea of running multiple instances of ibus-pinyin without a valid reason
It would go a long way if this worked reliably (and securely) out-of-the-box on Qubes OS
We all go out of our way to sandbox and compartmentalise our other software, and this software arguably needs to compartmentalised even more…
Does ibus-pinyin work only if installed in AppVMs?
I don’t know whether there is a software piece that will not require you to install stuff in all persistent domains, but there are other options.
First and foremost, if you are going to install ibus-pinyin everywhere, you can use salt to automate and document your configuration.
Secondly, if you don’t want to install ibus-pinyin everywhere, you can install it in dom0 and make some sort of automation to type your inputs in dom0 and just copy them to your target domain. Main problem with this is that it can turn out unreliable and doesn’t work with domains without Qubes integration.
. I think it is 