I am having a rather strange problem with GIMP. Every so often I lose the ability to use my keyboard with GIMP. It works fine with every other application that I have, OpenOffice, gedit, etc, it is just in GIMP that I cannot type anything; I have to shut GIMP down and restart it, I might have the keyboard for an hour, or maybe just 2 mins, it varies. I have uninstalled and reinstalled GIMP but the issue has not been resolved. I have a Dell D600 laptop running Ubuntu 7.10. Any thoughts as to what the issue may be? This is really making GIMP hard to use...

Thanks,
Todd

Maybe delete the hidden .gimp folder containing your user settings in your home directory? All your custom settings will be lost.

I gave that a shot, unfortunately, it did not do the trick. I am still losing the keyboard every so often. It is making Gimp almost unusable. I am having some other issues as well, not sure if it is me doing something wrong ( I am not very experienced with graphics software ) or if it is something else. Gimp is the only application that I am having the keyboard issue with; I think that it is a safe bet to assume that that one is not 'user error'. I would hate to have to reinstall Ubuntu just for the Gimp issue, but I am not sure what else to try. I appreciate the suggestion though.

Thanks,
Todd

Hi, I have the same exact problem and I find it really cumbersome...

Hopefully, I use to save everything really often so I can close / re-open and I'm using a SSD so it's not that long to be up and working again but it's so frustrating...

It happens mostly when I want to rename layers, most of the time it will lose the keyboard input for this specific task or any other new window one where it's required to enter some text. I still can "alt-f" to select any menu from an already opened window... that's sooo weird... sometimes, if I really need to save something with a given name (not the default name) I have to "touch myfile.png" for example then using the mouse only find this file and overwrite it...

What a damned bug ! How comes there's not any fix yet ???

I'm running Kubuntu 14.04 with standard repository (I might have some specific ones but nothing special there...).

It's also happening on my laptop running lubuntu 14.04 too :'(

So I guess this REALLY is a GIMP bug (I never had this bug using Blender which I use *a lot* for video editting...)

Regards

I would say it is a Ubuntu issue and not a gimp one


how did you install gimp?
as in is it the default installed version or one you built

The one from the Ubuntu default repository.

I could try to build it from the sources but I guess that will take time...

Hi, I found at least a workaround to this issue !

I noticed I had the small "iBus" icon in my taskbar (to switch keyboard region mapping).

Well, next time I had an issue in gimp (well, the 100% way of having it is just by renaming a layer and selecting it's name and use CTRL+C, it will lock any other layer renaming possibility, the keyboard won't work in gimp anymore in new text boxes, but you'll still be able to alt-letter the menus... so weird).

Just either kill ibus (right click on the icon then quit) => you won't be able to use some french characters like â but it will work in gimp

OR you also can right click in the gimp text box and select the input style and choose X11 (you won't have any special character access anymore).

The other workaround is to NEVER use CTRL+C in a text box in gimp, but that kinda sux...

And you also can restart gimp but that's a pain in the ass...

I think gimp developers should fix this issue because there must be some incompatibility between ibus and gimp.

Regards

---------- Post added 2014-10-01 at 12:32 ----------

Hi, I found at least a workaround to this issue !

I noticed I had the small "iBus" icon in my taskbar (to switch keyboard region mapping).

Well, next time I had an issue in gimp (well, the 100% way of having it is just by renaming a layer and selecting it's name and use CTRL+C, it will lock any other layer renaming possibility, the keyboard won't work in gimp anymore in new text boxes, but you'll still be able to alt-letter the menus... so weird).

Just either kill ibus (right click on the icon then quit) => you won't be able to use some french characters like â but it will work in gimp

OR you also can right click in the gimp text box and select the input style and choose X11 (you won't have any special character access anymore).

The other workaround is to NEVER use CTRL+C in a text box in gimp, but that kinda sux...

And you also can restart gimp but that's a pain in the ass...

I think gimp developers should fix this issue because there must be some incompatibility between ibus and gimp.

Regards