Inconsistent keyboard across apps
Hi, I've been running Bazzite on my PC for a couple weeks now, and I have noticed some inconsistencies in keyboard mapping across the system. As of the time of this posting, I'm running Bazzite GNOME 42.20250817.
I live in Brazil, I'm a portuguese speaker and I have my system set for Brazilian Portuguese. My keyboard layout is US default, so I run it with a
us-intl (specifically US International with Dead Keys) mapping , to be able to input accents.
For instance, on Firefox, other desktop or console apps, my keyboard behaves as expected. For instance, if I press ' then a, my output is an á. If I press ' then c, my output is a ç. If i press ' then v, my output is 'v (for writing I've, for instance).
Now, if I do any of those on any window of the steam overlay (browser, friends, chat, etc., and whether on default steam or the big picture overlay), the dead keys are completely ignored. So, if I press ' then c, the output is just c. If I press ' then a, the output is just an a. This behaviour is not present on steam desktop nor on big picture mode.
And on Discord, for instance, if I press ' then a, my output is á. But if I press ' then v (for writing I've, for example), my output is ǘ.
Is it something I'm doing wrong, there's anything I have to do to make the experience consistent across all programs running on my PC? I'm a long-time linux user, but I've never had to fiddle around with keyboard settings because I have never ran into issues like that, so I don't really know where to start.
Can anyone help me with that?79 Replies
I have a solution for you my friend, take a look at my message here https://discord.com/channels/1072614816579063828/1087140957096517672/1399878433575669830
The problem is by and large two: one is the incorrect UTF-8_EN-US layout in Linux (not bazzite specific) that has apparently been an issue for decades, which is what is giving you the wrong result for dead key combos when using an EN-US keyboard; the other is Flatpak access permissions causing some of the inconsistencies.
Likely the applications where the keyboard is loading right have their own keyboard setup/language processing features (that's the case for example for Firefox and Steam) that would not work elsewhere (such is on Steam Overlay, for some reason, but also other apps like Discord).
Let me know if you're able to fix it with my linked message, otherwise I'll give more detailed instructions later as I've had a more detailed guide in my drafts for ages now that I can get some time to complete
Hey @Frings, thanks for all your help. I followed your guide and it worked like a charm for Discord and other Flatpak apps which were behaving strangely. But it didn't work at all for Steam's overlay... it also haven't made it worse, so I believe there's something else that I should look into for it.
Aye, glad it helped! Is there anything other than Steam Overlay not working? Could you try out one of the text apps that come with the system like kate or kwrite? (Another way is testing it in your 'start menu' search, assuming you're in KDE rather than GNOME)
I've had problems with Steam being finnicky either in the overlay and/or in Source games in the past, but we can just try to be sure whether it's that here too
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that, sorry... I'm on GNOME.
No worries! I haven't tested this out myself in GNOME yet, but I reckon the spirit would be the same - any application that comes natively in the image rather than installed afterwards
But yeah, it seems to be working well everywhere but on steam's overlay
Maybe it has something to do with Bazzite's built-in script for launching Steam? 🤔
Gotcha! And, just in case... sorry but I'm an IT support person, so I have to ask: have you rebooted? 😛
lol, yeah, I did...
ahah alright great
I'm also an IT guy, but I'm a networking guy
So the reboot is already a default behaviour for me 😛
I'm not sure whatever we see is Bazzite-specific, though I do remember I ultimately changed my system language from PT-BR back to English 🤔 and I have no problems since... I remember it definitely had some snags leftover. I'm assuming you're on Wayland, not X11?
And - not a Steam Deck image? (Steam Deck has its own language setup issues lol)
Yeah, I'm running a Wayland session with GNOME as display manager. I have installed bazzite via the newest (at the time) ISO image from Bazzite's official site (
bazzite-gnome-nvidia-open-stable-amd64.iso)
I did install all possible upgrades via Bazzite's own "System Update" tool as wellperfect! an IT guy too indeed 😛
I mean... I think I know my way around linux since I've been using it for a few decades now, but I'm also just a regular user at the same time, because I have never tried to do anything much exotic with any linux install I ever ran. 😅
hey you're already ahead of me! I've only recently moved over to linux, so maybe with our powers combined we can figure this out for ya lol
I'm thinking you could try to add the default keyboard in
/usr/etc/environment to see if it makes Steam pull up things proper
just checking to see which proper option we use, one sec
ok so that'd be adding
just be sure no typos and whatnot and each option in their own line
if you have anything other than a standard full keys kb, you can also add XKB_DEFAULT_MODEL= out of the list in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/baseHmmm... I'm unable to add anything to
/usr/etc/environment, even as root. Might be due to the fact that this is an immutable distro... 🤔
But I was able to add it to /etc/environmenthuh 🤔 I was able to over here as root, interesting
fair enough, that could still work - will just require logout and login
I mean... I think I can remount the filesystem as read-write, but I'm not sure if changing anything there could break something elsewhere
I'm not used to immutable distros
I'd say probably not worth it honestly!
sorry you might want to do the variant to
=intl instead of us(intl)
us(intl) is the workman intl layout with dead keys, just intl oughtta be what we wantyeah, makes sense
well, let me try to reboot and see if everything still works... 😛
🤞 here's hopin
Yeah, nothing broken
And the environment variables stuck
🙏 now for whether steam wants to listen
yeah, let me launch a game to try it
Meh, no luck still... 😕
But a friend, who knows a lot about wine, just told me to see if it might not be something related to the proton version I'm running... I'll try to switch from proton experimental to one of the stable ones...
ooooh, that's a good point
I've ran most of my games straight without proton so far so can't be of much help there - best way to confirm if it'd influence it would be to try to run a game natively and see if the behavior continues I suppose
But no... just tried switching from proton experimental to proton hotfix and then to proton 9.0-4, but none of those did the trick
I thought it could, because on my previous setup I ran steam with the compatibility layer set to proton 9
And hadn't changed it from proton experimental since installing bazzite, that is
guh, annoying... might this be why I switched from Portuguese system language to English? let me do a switch back and see
on fedora 42 I had switched from English to Portuguese because the accents were not working properly
So I just installed bazzite directly with Portuguese settings in hopes to avoid that 🤣
sorry, had a slight detour when my mouse suddenly died lol
I feel ya...
oh, no problem at all... you're helping me so much already
so I switched to Portuguese here and it's.... indeed not working on steam overlay
😭
the one other thing I remember doing was changing fcitx5 per their recommendations for wayland, but not sure it's applicable here or how different it'd be on GNOME from KDE: https://fcitx-im.org/wiki/Using_Fcitx_5_on_Wayland#
Well, it's worth a try
pretty much what I was thinking 😛 it's weird that it's just steam though... (and same here)
Let me try to set it, reboot and try again
Yes, SO weird...
I think I found the culprit
might not be fcitx after all! ~/.steam/registry.vdf has
nvm since our problem is we're using EN-US layout, launching steam with -language portuguese doesn't really address the problem 🫥
Oh
Just got back...
I didn´t had fctix installed here
ooh?
So I installed and set it up
Just rebooted, and will try
Fingers crossed🤞
🙏 supposedly both these things should fix it, and I haven't changed my own etc/env so 🤞
well
The game still recognizes the keyboard and all accents perfectly
But now there's 3 new symptoms:
1) now the keyboard doesn´t work at all on the steam overlay
2) the previous strange behaviour on Discord and other flatpak apps is back
3) After exiting the game, my mouse cursor does not appear any more when I try to interact with any flatpak apps... 😝
Oh, never mind the mouse cursor symptom... it just got back
Maybe steam somehow locked the mouse for itself while the game was still loaded in ram... 🤔
trying to address this keyboard layout thing makes me feel as if we're trying to do some grand change in the system rather than just type accents lol
yeah
so much work for such a simple thing... 😕
You know what... I think I'll try to revert the fctix changes and be satisfied my PC haven´t exploded yet
It's not that bad having to alt-tab to be able to type properly when chatting with my friends 😅
aahah yeah that'd be worth it - fctix change might require you to set your input settings again under system settings, but other than that, if it worked before then it's worth it
in my case my giving up was changing system language to English, everything works fine then
Well, I can also try that after reverting fctix
yanno although interestingly, I changed my /etc/environment now to what I told ya, and indeed the issue is back for me: 'a 'c ~a
so let me try something here
ok
I'll get to rollback the last changes around here
PFFFT you're going to hate me
I tried
XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT=us(intl) instead of XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT=intl (like I had originally said), and...
WAT
well
Let me give it a shot
in my defense, linux's own layout list said it was otherwise!! 😭
ahah yeah worth a last shot at least
Oh, come on... you're not at fault here
I'm a (bad) linux user since 1994, and I'm perfectly aware of how good and at the same time how bad it can be
software and documentation-wise
you won't hear me disagree 😛
if you ever want to check/change it by the way, in case you get another layout keyboard, you can consult
/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/well, just changed it here... let me reboot onde more
🙏
OK, rebooted... let's try once more
moment of truth!
nah, nothing here... 😞
darn it 😭
in my quest to fix the overall problem on my end I changed so many things in my system that who knows which combination of things fixed it here :/
gah!
Well, if it's working for you it's a good thing then
for what it's worth, I'll try to remember what else I tried changing beyond also having this in my environments file
and last resort if you get annoyed too much, changing the system language itself to english does fix it too
if I ever manage to find/remember something else I'll hit you up if you'd like
Yeah, I don't appreciate the date and time formats being all "wrong", but if changing to English is what's necessary, so be it
Although I think I might get better results with en-uk instead of en-us 🤔
oh, in KDE I'm able to change those independently (though annoyingly they get reset each time you change language)
is that not possible in GNOME?
Well, on Fedora 42 it wasn't possible last time I tried, but that was around 8 or 9 months ago... then I switched to portuguese and never looked again at that screen. Don't remembar what was the exact GNOME version back then, but it was updated a few times since then
I was just fixing it up as we speak
I understandably never want to look at this screen again as well after the saga it took me to figure out how to fix this LOL
worth having a check, wish I knew more about GNOME for some insight! in the end it's a neverend choice of trade-offs...
Yeah, now it is possible... I just don't know if that's a bazzite mod or if this setting finally bade it back into GNOME. 🤔
Well, let me logoff and logon again to see if it'll work
think that might be GNOME! regardless, here's hoping 🙏
Yeah, I think it might be something GNOME-related...
Changing to English didn´t help as well
But what's more strange is that it worked perfectly well on vanilla fedora 42
which comes with GNOME
oh well
I think I'll drop it for now
gah, I'm sorry about that!
at least we've improved your situation, steam nonwithstanding
Please, you've been as helpful as it gets
Yes, at least part of the problem was solved
and I really thank you for that ❤️
happy to help! 🥰 I'll be making note of these and maybe one day we can find a full-on solution for all of us who go through this struggle
Yeah, I think I'll try to open a ticket at bazzite's github page... maybe they're able to help (or fix it, if this is really a bug)
Hey @CrocDeluxe, I had the same problem and I think I've found the solution.
I changed the Virtual Keyboard to Fcitx 5 in this menu
And in the Input Method I set it up like this
Everything is working, even AltGr keys
Hey @Leena Marigold, thanks for your reply. I just don't really think it'll help me, since I'm running GNOME instead of KDE. I even tried to manually install and set up Fctix 5, but I got to a dead end where my keyboard completely stopped working, so I reverted those changes.
I got a similar problem but system wide. Yesterday all worked fine but today out of the blue I'm getting ć instead of ç on kde.