Lack of an application similar to gnome-startup-applications in Ubuntu WSL affects the use of ibus

[linghengqian]

Description

• Lack of an application similar to gnome-startup-applications in Ubuntu WSL affects the use of ibus.
• In the current state, users often need to manually start ibus-daemon if they need to use IMEs such as ibus under WSLg. Assuming there is a freshly installed Ubuntu WSL 22.04 instance, to use ibus in microsoft-edge, the steps look like the following.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
# In the current issue, it is set to `zh_CN.UTF-8`. 
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

# Before executing `echo $LANG`, open a new Ubuntu WSL shell. Make sure `echo $LANG` outputs `zh_CN.UTF-8`.
echo $LANG
# I would say this will provide a Chinese GUI for `ibus-setup`.
sudo apt install language-pack-gnome-zh-hans-base -y
cd /tmp/
# Install Microsoft Edge
wget https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/edge/pool/main/m/microsoft-edge-stable/microsoft-edge-stable_122.0.2365.92-1_amd64.deb?brand=M102 -O ./microsoft-edge-stable.deb
sudo apt install --fix-missing ./microsoft-edge-stable.deb -y
# Install the input method framework `ibus` and the input method editor `ibus-libpinyin`
sudo apt-get install fonts-noto-cjk fonts-noto-color-emoji dbus-x11 zenity -y
sudo apt-get install ibus-libpinyin -y
sh -c 'echo "export GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus" >> ~/.bashrc'
sh -c 'echo "export XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus" >> ~/.bashrc'
sh -c 'echo "export QT_IM_MODULE=ibus" >> ~/.bashrc'
source ~/.bashrc
ibus-daemon -dxr
# Add Input Method `中文 -> 智能拼音`
ibus-setup

# Restart WSL by executing `wsl --shutdown` in Windows PowerShell 5.1 or PowerShell 7.
# Open a new Ubuntu WSL Shell.
ibus-daemon -dxr
microsoft-edge

• At this point, I can indeed use ibus to input Chinese in microsoft-edge running under WSLg.
• 
• There is a very cumbersome thing here. Using ibus requires an ibus-daemon process to be started in the background. Execute ibus-daemon -dxr to ensure that a globally unique ibus-daemon process is started and runs in the background. But the problem is that before opening any application under WSLg, you need to ensure that ibus-daemon -dxr has been executed once in the Ubuntu WSL Shell.
• The easiest way to verify is to restart WSL by executing wsl --shutdown in PowerShell 7, then open a new Ubuntu WSL Shell and execute ibus-setup once. At this time, ibus-setup will prompt you that ibus-daemon is not started at all.
• 
• This means that when running GUI software using ibus, it is often necessary to perform two steps. Take gnome-text-editor as an example.

sudo apt install gnome-text-editor -y
ibus-daemon -dxr
gnome-text-editor ~/.bashrc

• In the standard Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop environment, there is a complete Gnome desktop, so you can use gnome-startup-applications to execute ibus-daemon -dxr before starting the desktop. And Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop does not need to do this at all, because under the Gnome desktop, ibus is out of the box. Refer to https://askubuntu.com/questions/48321/how-do-i-start-applications-automatically-on-login .
• For Ubuntu WSL, I don't think gnome-startup-applications is useful because there is no Gnome standard desktop environment at all. I think the current Ubuntu WSL lacks a mechanism to automatically execute a command like ibus-daemon -dxr in the background when the WSL distribution is running. I can confirm that executing echo "ibus-daemon -drx > /dev/null 2>&1" >> /etc/profile.d/ibus.sh to write ibus-daemon -drx to /etc/profile.d/ibus.sh has little to no effect for Ubuntu WSL.

Need and use case

• Provide a document to guide the implementation of the so-called automatic startup mechanism in Ubuntu WSL. Of course, the better option is to provide a kind of apt-get application so that ibus-daemon can always be automatically started when WSL is running.
• Taking Arch Linux's https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IBus document as an example, Arch Linux provides an AUR package named ibus-daemon, which can directly register the related ibus-daemon command as a systemd service through systemctl start ibus@$DISPLAY.service. Arch Linux also provides an AUR package named ibus-autostart, which can automatically start the related ibus-daemon command in scenarios such as bootup/shutdown, user login/logout, device plug in/unplug, time events, filesystem events, shell login/logout, Xorg startup, desktop environment startup, and window manager startup. Refer to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Autostarting .
• It would be nice if Ubuntu WSL provided some similar apt-get app.

Additional information

• This is the result of further investigation into Unable to switch to ibus as IME via im-config #450 , Is it possible to set the IME via im-config instead of environment variables? WhitewaterFoundry/pengwin-setup#385 and Installing gnome-text-editor via WSL, can't bring up the input bar of ibus gnome-text-editor#9 .