Pinyin on EndeavourOS

Typing Chinese in EndeavourOS

For a long time I struggled with setting up EndeavourOS for inputting Chinese. It was just unfantomable. And it seemed like every time I installed Linux I had to repeat my struggles again. So finally, over a long weekend, I focused deep into this matter and put down the steps into near-permanence into github so I never have to repeat this struggle again.

With some online research, I followed the steps below and was able to type Chinese via pinyin on EndeavourOS.

First, install everything related to fcitx5 with the following commands:

sudo pacman -S fcitx5 fcitx5-gtk fcitx5-qt
sudo pacman -S fcitx5-chinese-addons
sudo pacman -S fcitx5-configtool
sudo pacman -S noto-fonts noto-fonts-cjk

Next, add the following environment variables in your bash profile:

export GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx
export QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx
export XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx

Log off and then log back in.

At the bottom of task bar, select the keyboard input configuration. For the 'Available Input Method', select 'pinyin'. Hit Apply and then Close.

Now by select Ctrl-Space, you can switch to typing in pinyin.

2024-05