Hey, glad to see you got it semi-working now. For the keyboard config inside SDDM, I know of arch instructions, but it should work the same on yours. The package to install for the virtual keyboard might be different, but the config file for SDDM should be around here ( says to make it if it doesn’t exist)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SDDM#Enable_virtual_keyboard

The specific package on Debian seems to be this one. Try installing it with all dependencies needed-

https://packages.debian.org/sid/qtvirtualkeyboard-plugin

Again, what can they tap or see into that they couldn’t before? All info on the other servers is public, that would be true for any federated server. I really don’t get how they’d get any more access to your data than another random person on the internet seeing your profile. They’re not making their own instance available to make accounts on, or enable users to post on it directly. You aren’t giving them any more details than you would if you had a Twitter account that was public. It is quite literally just for official government information dissemination without being locked behind rate limits.

Surveillance? In what sense, here in particular. A bit confused. Also, it depends on the kind of private instance you mean, since this is private too, in the sense you cannot make accounts on it. What other benefit do they gain over people, using this over a corporate website?

Try and see if the settings application shows the onscreen keyboard as enabled or not. Should be in All settings- Virtual keyboard. If it was working on the lock screen it might just need some setting to change. Are you on X11 or Wayland? That might also be a factor, if it stops once it switches display servers.

Which distro are you on right now? It should have it, at least there is one on mine. Think it’s called maliit-keyboard.

It’s in a similar vein to having RES for reddit. I never used it without it, so I don’t mind it. But yeah, it’s something that is being planned to be inbuilt by default so I still don’t think you need to make an account elsewhere by any means. It’s just appending the post link to your own instance’s link. And again, all third party clients already do that by default. I’m on wefwef and it’s been a breeze. Till then, if you’re browsing on a desktop browser, this userscript does the job - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469273-lemmy-universal-link-switcher The biggest benefit to having it would be that it rewrites the links not just on lemmy, but on other websites that have hyperlinks to it too. So even if you’re browsing a website that shares a lem.mee link, it will open up on your own instance instead. Super useful to have not just for using inside of Lemmy, but outside of it too, for a seamless experience.

Nah, you still don’t need to open their own link. That’s something that’s I think is in the works to be streamlined but is doable with browser extensions, when you click on one link you should get to open the post’s “local” copy on your instance, which would allow you to post your comment there, and that local copy would sync with the original in a bit so that your comment displays there as well. You should still be able to see the post’s local copy if you preface it with your instance’s url, but for doing it automatically yeah, third party clients are doing it already I believe and you can do it on your browser via userscripts. Editing to add that if you’ve subscribed to a particular community and are seeing it’s posts there on your feed, you are basically doing just that, seeing it’s local copy on your own instance. Which is why you can comment on them without needing to login on to the original community instance.