In the classic layout, there is a menu that can be accessed via Alt+M. It has a &Shutdown item. However, the dialogue that pops open and which gives the choice of &Shutdown and &Restart has no focus, so it is impossible to select anything in it with just the keyboard. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Open the shutdown dialogue, either with the mouse or by using keyboard shortcuts from the GUI. Actual Results: The dialogue does not react to keyboard input, a pointing device has to be used instead. Expected Results: The dialogue should get the keyboard focus upon opening.
From what I can remember that is an X limitation. Before login there is no window manager running. The shutdown dialog is a new window and without a WM the window directly below the window manager has focus. Don't think that can be fixed.
I see. In that case one could argue that a dialogue is a bad choice, and that a Shutdown submenu would be better suited. I understand the safety aspect; the dialogue requires deliberate action, whereas a simple menu could be triggered by accident, and a simple reboot could have major repercussions in certain environments. &Menu - &Session - &KDE - &Awesome - &Console mode - &Shutdown - Please select below - Halt - Reboot If there are no accelerator shortcuts in the Shutdown submenu, there is no accidental activation through the letter keys. And the “Please select” item catches accidental presses of Enter. But well. Even though it’s annoying sometimes, this is not a very prominent issue, so I’d be OK with WONTFIX. It’s still better than loading an entire WM session like GDM does, I suppose.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 268988 ***