I want to see the actual characters, hiragana, katakana… instead of squares and actually write traditional Chinese and Korean.
And easily change the input language / method
I want to see the actual characters … instead of squares
Sounds more like an issue with the font you’re using, rather than the input method.
At least for Chinese, we use ibus on desktop (KDE Wayland) and fctix5 on Android. Both work well in those devices
If you’re seeing squares instead of characters, it sounds more like you lack the proper fonts. Installing something along the lines of
noto-fonts-cjkshould resolve that.My personal choice between ibus and Fcitx5 would be Fcitx5. Ibus feels more integrated with GNOME environment, whereas Fcitx5 feels less so. Fcitx5 also has more features too, such as having a keybind that changes your language profile. This is what I do so that AltGr switches between English and Japanese, or English and Korean. Either way, both should achieve the same basic goal.
Don’t forget to set a bunch of environment variables too.
On Debian 12 and 13 with xfce, I am using ibus and Intelligent Pinyin (ibus-libpinyin) for Chinese and English. In the past I have used fcitx5 and various other IMEs. Once they’re configured there isn’t much difference between ibus and fcitx5, for my simple use. My Chinese is rudimentary but my Chinese wife is happy with the configuration. I switch input methods with a configurable keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-Space is my preference) or menu on the ibus item in the Status Tray Plugin of the xfce panel. Changing is easy.
I have task-chinese-s-desktop and task-chinese-t-desktop installed. These bring in fcitx5 and various fonts, which suggests that whoever created these tasks think fcitx5 is better than ibus. And I installed ibus-libpinyin, which brings in ibus. I don’t recall why now - it was long ago. So I have ibus and fcitx5 installed but have been using only ibus for the past few years. It works well enough that I haven’t revisited it. If I were installing again now, I might choose fcitx5 instead of ibus.
I see there are also task-japanese-desktop and task-korean-desktop, which you might find helpful.
I’ve never used xfce, I used Gnome previously and currently KDE Plasma, and I liked fcitx for both. However I had a bug with Anki where it wasn’t able to change language inputs with fcitx, so I had to switch to iBus. Both work fine, although I liked that Fcitx showed the conversion preview without having to hit tab, while iBus does.
The squares is probably a font issue, this article might help. You can easily switch input for both apps and set up your own shortcut combo.
I’ve never used xfce, I used Gnome previously and currently Wayland
Wayland… Isn’t a DE. Do you mean gnome on x11 and Wayland?
Sorry, I have dummy noob moments 😔
I use KDE Plasma
In the past, I’ve used Fcitix (in Plasma anyway) and found it to work well.
Since I switched distros and moved to Wayland though, I haven’t managed to get it working again.
Not familiar with Chinese writing for typing, but through Fcitx, I could configure both Japanese and Korean phonetic keyboards, and that helps a bunch.
If you go this path, going from memory as it's been a while since I set them
- Had to install the keyboards Mozc and Hangul in the “Input Method” tab
- At the “Addon” tab, select the Hangul option, click on Configure at the bottom, and set the keyboard layout as Romaja (and don’t remember if I had to tick them, but Auto Reorder and Hanja mode in the same screen are ticked, but not Word Commit)
- For Mozc, (iirc) go to the Fcitx tray icon > Mozc Tool > Configuration Tool and in the window that opens, have Input Mode as Romaji
- To be able to change inputs with the keyboard, (iirc) at the Global Config tab with the “Show Advanced Options” active, had to tick “Enable Hotkey to scroll Between Input Method” and the option right below to select a key combo at “Scroll between Input Method” (Ctrl Super was the least awkward of the options)
