Summary
I'm using Kubuntu on a laptop. Many (not all) of the KDE widgets stopped accepting keyboard inputs after I had to hard-reset the system due to unresponsiveness.
I need a way to make these widgets/plasmoids/etc start accepting keyboard inputs again to fix this problem.
Background
At one point several months ago, an app got the system stuck and I had to do a hard-reset. (It was unresponsive and couldn't even Ctrl + Alt + F1 my way to a terminal, so there was no other way.) After this, many (not all) of the KDE widgets/plasmoids/etc no longer accept keyboard inputs, even when they clearly have the focus. Obviously, something got messed up by the hard-reset, but I have no idea what it is.
Some of the affected areas include:
- Application Launcher: cannot use the built-in search-as-you-type functionality;
- Discover: can't enter admin password when asked while trying to install/remove software; must do this from terminal;
- Network Manager: can't enter WiFi/VPN passwords
- etc.
Some apps where I've not seen this issue include Amarok, Kate, Application Dashboard, etc.
I've tried re-installing the KDE environment and included apps/plasmoids/etc, including purging config files, and so on. None of my attempts have made a difference. In fact, the issue originated while using 16.10; upgrading to 17.04 did not change anything.
I've been using workarounds[1] for months, and trying different things in the meantime, but I'd really like to get this problem fixed once and for all already. It's extremely annoying, but I've found nothing else and even a bug report I filed back in May has received no attention.
Help from here is my last resort, since I'd really like to avoid having to nuke my system from orbit by re-installing the entire OS from scratch, formatting my /home/
partition (given that I don't know what/where the cause really is), and having to re-configure everything[2].
Update(s)
- Upgrading to 17.10 did not help.
Footnotes
[1] For example, if I copy something, I can paste it into the widgets using the mouse (R-click >> Paste; Ctrl+V doesn't work). I'm also using Application Dashboard, but its behavior is not always consistent.
[2] It's the only way to be sure.