The solution was suggested by Scott Ferguson <prettyfly.productions@gmail.com>: $ cp ~/.kde/share/config/khotkeysrc ~/.kde/share/config/khotkeysrc_before_I_had_a_fiddle $ nano ~/.kde/share/config/khotkeysrc change line 7 from:- Enabled=false to:- Enabled=true This solution works for me. Not sure why KDE4 is shipped with the default that disables shortcut keys.