I switched to an Ubuntu system in 2021 after almost 20 years of using Windows systems to type Japanese using the alpha-numeric keys on UK laptop QWERTY keyboards. After the switch to Ubuntu 24.04 last year and the removal of lib-anthy from the system, I've been unable to write Japanese on my laptop.
For clarity, I've always typed Japanese by using English alphabet keys on a QWERTY keyboard to spell words in hiragana and then select the appropriate words or kanji from the system's drop-down list - in other words, it was the same system in place with native Japanese keyboards with the important difference that I didn't use direct kana input and used English alphabet keys instead. I use essentially the same process on my Android devices, with the main difference that touchscreens hate me so it takes minutes to type something on a touchscreen compared to the seconds it would take to type the same thing using my laptop's mechanical keyboard! I don't have access to a USB keyboard and don't have the money to spare to buy one, either.
Last year (2024), I found details here on AskUbuntu about installing MOZC and followed the instructions to do so. Unfortunately it seems to convert my UK QWERTY keyboard layout to some kind of Japanese keyboard layout with direct hiragana input and no way of selecting words and kanji from a drop-down list. In other words, it's completely useless for me. I'm not sure if I've simply not configured it properly, but I haven't been able to find any way of reconfiguring it, either.
I've also experimented with the various options available in Settings -> Keyboard -> Input Sources -> Add Input Source, but I'm unable to use any of them to input Japanese in the way that I did pre-24.04.
Can anyone give me any advice on a relatively straightforward way to achieve the same result I had with the lib-anthy support that was removed with the upgrade to 24.04? Being unable to write Japanese like I used to is really depressing! While the Android system is pretty robust with the level of "training" to recognise commonly used words like people's names and other non-standard words (much better than lib-anthy offered), touchscreens only seem to recognise about half of my inputs, and even then my fat fingers seem to touch the wrong key on the screen so most of the inputs that are recognised are actually spelling mistakes or mistypes...
I've seen various guides here and elsewhere on setting up ways to switch between input languages using keyboard shortcuts, so presumably other people are already successfully using Ubuntu 24.04 to input other languages outside of their system's native language. I really hope there's a way for me to return to writing Japanese as well.
Many thanks in advance!
Edit - Link to the MOZC installation guide I mentioned in my question:
How to configure Japanese Input in 24.04 or CJK or non-Latin input in general?
