Keyboard shortcuts issue

[komoricodrutz]

Distribution

22.3, Kernel 6.17.0-14

Package version

6.6.7

Graphics hardware in use

Radeon RX570 (and the iGPU Intel HD Graphics 530 - secondary only - not actually in active use unless for QuickSync for rendering video)

Frequency

Always

Bug description

I've been using Mint Cinnamon for 6-7 years now. I simply love it.
I am using 3 keyboard layouts: EN-US, RO and DE and switching between them all the time, depending on various contexts.
As an atavism from my Windoze days, I had configured the shortcut to switch between keyboard layouts to be "Alt+Shift L" (left alt+shift).
All these years before upgrading to 22.3, everything worked fine.
After upgrading, the keyboard applet in the panel disappeared and a window was shown, asking me something about choosing the IME (this happened a while ago, don't remember the exact workflow, but after re-configuring everything, it showed up again).
However, the Alt+Shift keyboard shortcut no longer works.
Even if I set it to the default Win+Space and add the Alt+Shift as additional shortcut, or set it to anything else and back to Alt+Shift, it still won't work.
Alt+Shift+1, 2 or 3 (custom shortcuts to switch directly to layout 1, 2 or 3) work just fine.
In addition:

• the "Remember the last layout used for each window" setting seems to work only randomly
• the layout applet in the panel shrinks to "..." when there are many open windows on the same workspace screen. It shouldn't.

As someone who switches often between these layouts, it is quite a bit disturbing.
I have also other friends who use this particular key combination (whom I switched to Mint from Windoze) and whom I haven't upgraded to the latest version because of this.
We are all using Windoze in a VM (qemu/kvm/libvirt) for different tasks, so it would be very inconvenient to use different shortcut keys per environment. (note that this is happening regardless of whether the VM is running or not, so that is most likely not the culprit)

After using the workaround I found while searching the webs - adding the key combination in the XKB Options tab, it seems to be working now.
But that's unfortunately just a workaround...
Thanks!

Steps to reproduce

Define "Left Alt+Shift" as shortcut to switch to next keyboard layout
Press the key combination: Nothing happens.
More details above

Expected behavior

Switch to next keyboard when pressing the defined key combination.

Additional information

Pls let me know if you need additional details and I will answer to the best of my capabilities (technically and time-wise)
Thanks!

[cravingforwind]

This has been going on for a few months now without any clear communication from Mint team about possible solutions. Basically - the only solution at this point is to switch to another distro. If Mint team isn't interested - why should we be?

[mtwebster]

Cinnamon 6.6 changed the default method layout switching keybindings are defined. The new method works the same way other keybindings in Cinnamon work - you must hold the modifier before pressing the second key - order matters, you can't just mash two keys now. You can, however define two keybindings now, and have both 'alt+left-shift' and 'left-shift+alt' defined:

Alternatively, you can clear those keybindings completely, and use the XKB Options tab to keep utilizing the old keybindings for layout switching:

This has been addressed for months now, there are closed issues and forum posts where this was all discussed.

[cravingforwind]

Sorry mate, nothing has been addressed. Switching layouts is still as laggy and uncertain.