QubesOS
Improve UX of power controls (shut down, reboot, sleep, log out, switch user) in app menu
The problem you're addressing (if any)
(Not filing this on behalf of Whonix, this is just a hurdle I ran into while working on stuff and thought was worth mentioning.)
Most desktop operating systems have power management and logout controls available from some OS-wide "main menu":
- Windows 11 has the controls in the Start Menu, hidden in a menu that can be opened by clicking the power icon in the lower-right corner of the menu.
- Windows 10 had the controls in the Start Menu, similarly hidden behind a power button, but on the left side of the menu.
- MacOS places all of these controls directly in the Apple Menu in the upper-right corner of the screen.
- Modern KDE-based distros have power controls in the lower-right corner of the application menu, sometimes hidden behind a "Leave" menu.
- Modern GNOME-based distros have the power controls in the system menu, which IMO is not the most obvious place to put it, but it kinda works similar to the Apple Menu arguably.
- Both the standard Application Menu and Whisker Menu of Xfce generally have power and log-out controls readily available.
Qubes OS doesn't use either standard Xfce menu, and instead uses a custom menu that integrates better with the Qubes workflow. This menu allow starting and powering off VMs, but it does not contain power and log-out controls for dom0, at least not that I've been able to find. dom0's power and log-out controls are instead hidden in a menu labeled "User" (or whatever your username is), in the upper-right corner of the desktop. It's not obvious that this "User" menu is even clickable, much less that it contains controls for logging out or turning off the machine. To make matters worse, this menu doesn't have "Reboot" readily available, you have to click "Log Out..." first to get to that. This has confused me on numerous occasions just trying to reboot dom0.
The solution you'd like
In the left-most sidebar of the application menu, right under the settings gear, add a power button icon. When clicked, this should pop up whatever log-out and power controls are supported by the current hardware. This could either be done in a dedicated popup window similar to what Windows does, or it could be made into another submenu similar to how the other submenus in the Qubes app menu work (though I think this would probably end up with too much horizontal empty space to be aesthetically pleasing).
The value to a user and who that user might be
Users can figure out how to turn off, reboot, and log out of their computer much more easily.
Completion criteria checklist
No response
Try the power button on the bottom left of the app menu. See qubes-desktop-linux-menu/qubes_menu/appmenu.py _do_power_button(), it supports Xfce and KDE.
Oh my word. I must be blind, I literally didn't see that, and I looked over the entire application menu.
Maybe then my request could be that we move the power button up, so that it's immediately underneath the gear?