Comment 102 for bug 1240198

I'm running two Ubuntu 14.04 machines with a UK keyboard layout. This problem affects one of them but not the other - not sure why.

On the affected machine EVERY TIME I accept a system update, the keyboard layout is broken. I can fix it by uninstalling ibus and rebooting, but on the next system update, the problem comes back. On the other machine, I can apply updates without incident.

Another problem is, if the user's password contains the affected keys, they will not be able to log in. It will look to them as if the upgrade has reset their password. They may look on the web for help, but they will not think to look for problems with swapped keys. If they are lucky, they may find my posting http://askubuntu.com/questions/695167/cannot-log-in-after-software-upgrade-ibus-issue. If not, they will probably get out the rescue disk and reinstall. This does nothing for the reputation of Linux as a replacement for Windows.

To add to the confusion, the first login after the upgrade will work, because the change is only applied after that. On the second and subsequent logins, they need to substitute some characters when they type their password.

To sum up, it appears that this only breaks some machines, which is why there has not been a huge fuss, but those machines that it breaks get broken repeatedly, and in some cases the symptoms make the problem look much more serious than it is, causing the user to do work that is disruptive and unnecessary.