The great 囧脸 a.k.a. CSSlayer quietly pushed out a new fcitx release 12 days ago, version number 4.2.9.8. Bear in mind the last new release from 囧脸 was back in the winter of 2018. Probably busy with the New Year, poor guy — he even forgot to bump the version number that time. Sure, most of the noble Archer crowd have already moved to fcitx5, but for us backwards Ubuntu users a new fcitx4 release still means a lot. Aside from fixing a pile of typos and updating translation files for a pile of languages almost nobody recognizes, it also fixes a few small problems.

Today I found out Baidu Pinyin has a Linux version now. Holy shit.

This article is outdated. For the current method of installing the stable Fcitx5 release on Ubuntu 20.04, go here: /archives/12285/ I went back and forth on whether to put Ubuntu in the title. Decided it was necessary, because right now only Arch Linux (and Debian) have the full Fcitx 5 suite — thanks to nepotism and cold-shoulder vibes respectively — and every single Fcitx 5 install guide online is written for Arch or Debian. All of them copied from each other. Basically zero Ubuntu. I spent a long time poking at Ubuntu’s packages before I noticed Ubuntu 20.04 can already install it.

Just a few days ago, my fcitx input method started crashing for no apparent reason. Basically, I’d start it up, type a few characters, and it would die. I dug through the logs and found the problem: it’s related to the fcitx-cloudpinyin module — the “cloud pinyin” thing.

There are a few ways to type kaomoji on Ubuntu. Let’s start with input methods — Fcitx’s “Jiong Lian” input method has a fairly unique approach to kaomoji. You can install a standalone table: sudo apt install fcitx-table-emoji