I have recently switched to using KDE as my window manager with Redhat 8.0, and have experienced problems with logging out and shutting down. I have had no problems whatsoever with either of these things in GNOME.

When I click the 'Logout' item at the bottom of the KDE menu, the confirmation dialogue appears, at which point I choose Logout. The confirmation goes away and then nothing happens and I'm returned to normal usage of KDE. However, if I repeat the process is I am logged out. Some coloured junk appears at the top of an otherwise blank screen before the login dialogue appears. This happens every time I try to logout of KDE - the first attempt fails and the second one succeeds. If I disable the confirmation dialogue the same sort of thing occurs.

The second part of the problem is I need to be able to shut down in KDE. (yes, I do actually turn off my PC sometimes). There is a setting in KDE Session Manager where you can change the 'default behaviour' of the 'Logout' option to either logging out, restarting or shutting down. However, changing this seems to have no effect and I am still logged out and not shut down on the second attempt.

What I really want is a dialogue when I click 'Logout' in the KDE menu which will allow me to select between logging out, restarting or shutting down. GNOME has this, and I heard somewhere that it exists for KDE too, though I've had no further confirmation of that. Is there any way to turn it on?

I can of course shut down the computer at the console with poweroff, but I would rather use the menu item to do it.

So in summary, Logout in the KDE menu only works on the second attempt and I can't use it to shutdown the computer.

Any suggestions on how to fix these problems? I can provide specs on request but since everything works fine in GNOME and at the console I didn't think the issue would be hardware-related.

Thanks.

It happened to me on Red Hat 8.0 with KDE even though I set the defaults to be the way I wanted them to be. My solution was to install Mandrake 9.0, and it works great with KDE. It gives a window where I can choose what I want to do like in GNOME.

Even so, there must be some way to solve this problem without having to switch distros. Did the first part of the prblem occur for you as well or just the second?

I believe that the shutdown etc is controlled by the login manager - GDM as default for redhat and KDE. The alternate manager is KDM which will allow shutdown from KDE as a user. One solution i've found is (with redhat) typing poweroff in a shell - this shutd down the pc. also ( but a pain) is to su root and type 'shutdown -h now' to halt or 'shutdown -r now' to reboot. These things should work but obviously changing the config of GDM is probably the best method.

I hope this helps, i'm still quite new at as well.

regards,

grim.