Comment 38 for bug 310270

Apparently the KDE keyboard repeat settings are not applied when you first log in. So when you go into system settings and you deactivate and then reactivate the keyboard repeat settings, you are actually *changing* the delay, because the KDE settings are overriding the system default, which is a much shorter delay than 660 ms.

You can try this yourself. Open a terminal or text editor right after logging in, and hold down a key to test the autorepeat rate. Then go into system settings and twiddle the check box for autorepeat. Then go back to your text editor and test the autorepeat again. It will be slower.

The point is that Dmitry's proposed fix is really just the same workaround in disguise: slow down the autorepeat settings.

Anyway, I'd like to stress that this is a solvable problem, because GNOME solves it somehow. I wish I knew where to look in the GNOME source code for the solution, but I don't.

Furthermore, I'm not convinced that media keys should work in the same way as regular keys. For example, having any autorepeat on the mute button is ridiculous. There's no case where you would want a toggle button to autorepeat. It would be like having autorepeat on Caps Lock.