No output on Fedora 37, dead keyboard

[RedBearAK]

@rbreaves

I tried upgrading one machine from Fedora 36 to 37 and ran into some of the problems people have been having on Ubuntu 22.04.1 and 22.10 (issue #755, #765). First, F37 needs python3-tkinter to be installed, or the service fails. But after that, the service starts fine yet there is no output.

The debug output or running manually in a terminal shows that it is receiving the keystrokes as input but nothing ever happens. You can't even Ctrl+C to quit in the terminal. Without access to the tray icon or the Kinto GUI app the machine would have to be forcibly restarted.

I've tried everything I know how to do but I still have no idea why this is happening. I know others have had success with "upgrading" xkeysnail to v0.4.0, but of course that breaks shortcuts like Alt+Tab.

What I haven't tried yet is converting to using keyszer. Without a solution to this, that would be the only other thing to try.

[RedBearAK]

@rbreaves

I went through the process of switching to keyszer on the same machine and it doesn't have the "no output" problem that Kinto's xkeysnail is having.

[falexandrou]

I just faced the same issue. Resorted to disabling kinto on Fedora.

Update: I left fedora in favour of Pop OS. Works like a charm there. Thank you for this awesome tool

[nabinkhadka]

Bump!

[jchonde]

Same here on ubuntu 22.10, no input and then upgrading to xkeysnail 0.4.0 breaks Alt+Tab.

[Man-with-Arrow]

Same, Fedora 37.

[rbreaves]

I will look at addressing this this weekend. Sorry I have been away for awhile. Of course any PRs on breaking issues are also welcomed, but I will look at getting the dependencies added and testing under Ubuntu & Fedora specifically. Not sure that will test beyond those 2 before making an updated release.

It apparently is difficult keeping up with the ever changing dependency names of packages.. I am sure this is why many devs end up using flatpaks these days and that might be something to look at in all seriousness.

[Man-with-Arrow]

Much appreciated! I’d be happy to help with any testing.

[rbreaves]

Dependency is now added to master, but have not yet tested it in all honesty so output may still be broken for all I know going off of what RedBearAK was saying earlier. It is probably fixed under Ubuntu now though.

[kelvincornelissens]

Just tested it on Fedora 37 but there is still no output after the hotfix

[deftdawg]

Here's how I got it going on SteamOS 3.4/HoloISO (an Arch variant):

sudo pacman -S tk # Fix ImportError: libtk8.6.so
sudo pip uninstall python-xlib xkeysnail
yay xkeysnail # aur/xkeysnail 0.4.0-1 (+9 0.24) (Installed)
# yay python-xlib # 0.31-3 should get pulled in as part of yay xkeysnail

NOTE: cmd-tab is semi-broken; only switching between the last two focused windows

[RedBearAK]

@deftdawg

NOTE: cmd-tab is semi-broken; only switching between the last two focused windows

This is due to Kinto using a patched branch of xkeysnail v0.3.0 that adds the concept of "held" keys. Without that patch, shortcuts like Cmd+Tab and Cmd+Grave will act as if you let go of the Cmd key after each use of the combo, even if you're still holding Cmd down.

[Man-with-Arrow]

@deftdawg

NOTE: cmd-tab is semi-broken; only switching between the last two focused windows

A workaround I've found for this is to use Cmd+Esc instead (change in Gnome settings).

[rubenOF]

@deftdawg

NOTE: cmd-tab is semi-broken; only switching between the last two focused windows

This is due to Kinto using a patched branch of xkeysnail v0.3.0 that adds the concept of "held" keys. Without that shortcuts like Cmd+Tab and Cmd+Grave will act as if you let go of the Cmd key after the first use of the combo.

Applying this (reverse) patch on the v0.4.0 version of xkeysnail fixed the Cmd+Tab problems for me.

[alexmarder]

@rubenOF what do you mean by reverse patch? Do you have a working forked version of xkeysnail package you could upload to github?

[guerreiropedr0]

Is there any update to this? I can't get it to work on Fedora 37

[RedBearAK]

Is there any update to this? I can't get it to work on Fedora 37

@guerreiropedr0

Your best bet right now is to follow the instructions on this thread that a few others have used to get set up with keyszer and a new Kinto config meant to work with it. There's an even newer config (that I'm currently using) posted further down in the thread.

#750 (comment)

As stated in the second post here, keyszer doesn't seem to have the problem. But I was testing F37 in a VM and I'm still using F36 on my main system. So keyszer could theoretically suffer from the same problem now with the latest updates to F37, even though it wasn't back in November. But I assume it will still be a solution to this issue.

Still haven't seen any information from anyone about what the actual problem is.

[RedBearAK]

An alternative to the Kinto installer that has no known issues on Fedora 36/37/38 is available here:

https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy

Also works on a growing list of other Red Hat-based, Ubuntu-based, Debian-based and Arch-based Linux distros.

[51n7]

An alternative to the Kinto installer that has no known issues on Fedora 36/37/38 is available here:

https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy

@RedBearAK This is amazing, thanks!!

Hopefully this can take some pressure off Kinto too, previously being the only library to achieve MacOS keybindings in Linux.

[RedBearAK]

@jonbestdev

Hopefully this can take some pressure off Kinto too, previously being the only library to achieve MacOS keybindings in Linux.

Glad it's working for you. 👍🏽

It's still basically just the Kinto config, with some additional tricks and a new installer that gets past some of the issues Kinto has been having lately. Hopefully a lot of what Toshy does will make its way into Kinto at some point.