text censor/keyboard focus lost issues in Ubuntu/Linux

As the title states, in some older versions of Ubuntu/Linux (confirmed on 8 - 10, not know if still exists in 11, 12), the text censor focus sometimes just loses when auto-complete is up. The keyboard seems frozen and one has to click other places first and then click again to gain focus back. This bug is particularly annoying when working with IDEs with auto-complete features on, such as Eclipse. This issue is caused by SCIM (SCIM daemon is on, although one doesn't explicitly summon it.) As the SCIM development has been off for many years, this bug has not been fixed so far.

launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/scim/+bug/293001

Nevertheless, there are several temporary solutions,

1. use scim-bridge:

im-switch -s scim-bridge

This method does not work on my system (karmic koala, 9.10). It is also reported that this may cause SCIM crashes.

2. http://hrstc.org/node/21

in System/Administration/Language Support, uncheck the "Enable support to enter complex characters".

There is no such an option at all in karmic koala.

3. use ibus/shut down SCIM when using Eclipse

4. delete ~/.xinput.d/en_US
This method works for me, but SCIM are not stable when working with Google-Chrome browser. Note that you may need to logout and login several times.