[Resolved - now using Onboard] Any recommendations for an on-screen keyboard like the one that Windows has. The one that comes with Gnome is annoying to use...

Kickass Women@lemmy.world to Linux@lemmy.ml – 120 points –

It pops up and down from the bottom of the screen when I don't want it to

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I have no recommendations for you, I just want to second your opinion that the Gnome on screen keyboard is annoying.

They need to talk Valve into open-sourcing their OSK. It's kind of amazing.

The only amazing thing about it is the dual trackpad typing. Apart from that it lacks keys like Alt, Ctrl, Esc and the F-keys. Sometimes the arrow keys, tab and insert send weird key codes.

I've had a good experience with Onboard.

Trying it out right now

Update: I think that Onboard is good enough to replace Gnome's OSK.

Does it work with Wayland?

Presumably via Xwayland, but I haven't tried it.

I wouldn’t be so sure about xwayland, it would need the ability to insert keystrokes. I don’t know at what level it does that

The last release came out 7 years ago…

No? last release was 1-1-2024...

Those are just changes to the build system. The last upstream release was 7 years ago. Last commit to the main branch was 6 1/2 years ago. This project is unmaintained. It should be forked by someone who is passionate about it.

I wouldn’t call that unmaintained then?

the package is maintained (will continue to install on modern ubuntu versions), but the software is unmaintained (no bug fixes, no new features, will stagnate and eventually become obselete as incompatible with future desktop standard modifications)

Can anyone give a layman an explanation as to what makes software like this unmaintained? It seems like it should be fine if it works and is still getting updates.

It will 90% have no wayland support. It may have bugs that are not resolved. It may rely on outdated software components and break if distros stop shipping it.

On steam deck I switched to plasma mobile primarily because of how bad the gnome onscreen keyboard is.

There is nothing else. OSK sucks on Linux. I wish I knew how to fucking code, I'd make my own.