Would it be helpful for your use pattern if GNOME Shell had a specific keyboard shortcut to open the system menu, bypassing the need to navigate to the top bar first? I'm honestly surprised that it doesn't already: that seems like an omission.
One thing that might be helpful is that Super+V will open the notifications panel (notifications and calendar), and from there you can navigate towards the System menu with the right arrow key. Unfortunately the number of right arrow key presses depends whether there are notifications in the panel. Also, if there is at least one application window open, you can press Super+F10 to open the application menu, and then the right arrow will navigate towards the system menu; but that shortcut isn't available if there are no windows open, making it less useful. On Sun, 05 Mar 2023 at 08:40:32 -0700, Sam Hartman wrote: > * Install task-gnome-desktop on top of effectively debian:bookworm out > of docker (roughly debootstrap --varient=minbase) GNOME isn't really designed to run in a Docker container, and Docker isn't really designed to run desktop environments, so you might be making things harder for yourself than they need to be. > I'd like to push back on the idea that sloppy focus is required. Are you using Wayland or Xorg? I tried installing gnome-session, gdm3 and gnome-terminal plus their Recommends into a virtual machine (to get a smaller version of task-gnome-desktop without big applications), and couldn't reproduce this in that environment without enabling sloppy focus: Ctrl+Alt+Tab to the top bar stayed in the top bar. I also tried installing task-gnome-desktop and couldn't reproduce this that way either. As before, I can reproduce this in Wayland mode by enabling sloppy focus. If I log in to "GNOME on Xorg" instead of the default GNOME session (which is Wayland), I can't reproduce this at all, even with sloppy focus. I think there might be some sort of strange focus behaviour for the Activities button on the top bar: when I switch on sloppy focus and then press Super+V, I can navigate left and right to all the other items on the top bar, but when focus reaches the Activities button it gets stuck and will not move away with further presses of the arrow keys. However, I tried installing a Shell extension that removes the Activities button, and that didn't help with the behaviour of gaining and then immediately losing focus under Wayland with sloppy focus. > * alt-f2 run gnome-terminal > * Confirm I'm in the terminal Current versions of GNOME are initially in Overview mode after login, and Alt+F2, gnome-terminal will run the terminal but stay in Overview mode until you press Super. Just to check, are you taking that into account, and going from Overview mode into normal window-management mode before testing? smcv