Bug 2070976

Summary: Would be good to have an on-screen keyboard option for kiosk mode
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Reporter: Ray Strode [halfline] <rstrode>
Component: gnome-sessionAssignee: Ray Strode [halfline] <rstrode>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Michael Boisvert <mboisver>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact: Marek Suchánek <msuchane>
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 8.6CC: rstrode, tpelka
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: Triaged
Target Release: ---Flags: pm-rhel: mirror+
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: gnome-session-3.28.1-19.el8 Doc Type: Enhancement
Doc Text:
.Kiosk mode supports an on-screen keyboard You can now use the GNOME on-screen keyboard (OSK) in the kiosk mode session. To enable the OSK, select the *Kiosk (with on-screen keyboard)* option from the gear menu at the login screen. Note that kiosk mode in RHEL 8 is based on the X11 protocol, which causes certain known issues with the OSK. Notably, you cannot type accented characters, such as `é` or `ü`, on the OSK. See link:https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1916470[BZ#1916470] for details.
 Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2023-05-16 08:44:22 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Ray Strode [halfline] 2022-04-01 13:42:29 UTC 
Right now our kiosk mode assumes the customer is bringing their own keyboard, either physically or as part of their bespoke app.

Not all applications do that, though. Some customers expect the on-screen keyboard to be a standard feature of the kiosk platform, which is reasonable.

There are browser extensions, of course, that add the feature, but neither we or the customer have control over them, so customers may be reluctant to rely on them.

And of course, not all kiosk deployments are browser based anyway.

We don't currently ship any on-screen keyboards in RHEL 8, as far as I know, and most of the third party ones don't give a great user experience anyway, so I think the best option is to just provide a way in the kiosk session to switch out mutter for gnome-shell in a kiosk mode.

It has a pretty nice keyboard built-in and should solve the issue.

Of course for RHEL-9 we still need to a add an on-screen keyboard to gnome kiosk.
Comment 9 Michael Boisvert 2023-02-28 13:23:41 UTC 
There is a functional OSK while running gnome-session-kiosk-session-3.28.1-15.el8.x86_64.rpm. To enable it simply select "Kiosk (with on-screen keyboard)" from the session selector cog at the login screen.
Comment 21 errata-xmlrpc 2023-05-16 08:44:22 UTC 
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory (gnome-session bug fix and enhancement update), and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2023:2942