Fcitx Pinyin problem on Ubuntu 18.04

Byebye fcitx, Hello ibus

Update

Seems that it is quite unstable to use fcitx on Ubuntu 18.04, even after all the settings. I still occasionally encounter the missing candidate problem. The best solution I found is to purge fcitx* and use ibus-pinyin.

Surprisingly, it works quite well and gives solid predictions, pretty amazing compared to what I remembered several years ago. To use ibus provided by Ubuntu:

First clean up fcitx
rm -r ~/.config/fcifx
sudo apt-get purge fcitx*

Then choose ibus in settings
Settings ->
Region&Languge->
Manage Installed Languages ->  (choose ibus here)
Install / Remove Langauges ->
Install Chinese ->
Reboot computer ->
Settings ->
Region&Languge ->
left-bottom “+” add ->
Chinese ->
Chinese (Intelligent Pinyin).

Life becomes good again.

Original Post

After upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04, my fcitx pinyin IME won’t show candidates.

rm -r ~/.config/fcifx
sudo apt-get purge fcitx*
sudo apt-get install fcitx-googlepinyin

This re-installation solution didn’t work.

The fix I later found is to install Chinese language support in Gnome setting, and choose fcitx as keyboard input source.

So basically:
Settings-> Regions&Languages-> Manage Installed Languages-> Install/Remove Language -> Install Chinese -> Select fcitx as keyboard input method system.

Your IME is now willing to provide you with candidate characters.