shutdown option gone

[support]

On 02/03/2015 08:49, O. Sinclair wrote:
> On 01/03/2015 11:57, Thomas Blasejewicz wrote:
>> On 2015/03/01 14:27, O. Sinclair wrote:
>>> On 01/03/2015 05:55, Thomas wrote:
>>>> On 2015/03/01 12:51, Thomas wrote:
>>>>> On 2015/02/28 20:01, Charles T. Bell wrote:
>>>>>> On 02/28/2015 05:23 AM, Thomas wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you.
>>>>> Thomas
>>>> I forgot to mention:
>>>> Lock out (End session) does do/change NOTHING.
>>>>
>>> Hi, it seems something (can not say what) have gone seriously wrong with
>>> your installation as several basic functions have disappeared or are not
>>> working.
>>>
>>> If I were you I would make a backup of my data (Luckybackup is the tool
>>> I use), make listing of software I have installed after original
>>> installation and then simply reinstall from scratch.
>>>
>> Thank you.
>> "simply reinstall from scratch" ...
>> Well, I have had to do that over the SEVEN years I am trying to get
>> friendly with linux already a million times!
>> In this particular case "simply reinstall" means something like TWO DAYS
>> of work. I know, because I DID this many times.
>> * installation of the OS
>> * installation of some extra Linux software
>> * data transfer
>> * installation of VM Player to install Windows in it -> for the purpose
>> of installing many dictionaries Linux cannot provide
>> * customization
>>
>> Over these 7 years I have tried to install Linux - multiple versions on
>> multiple computers - an uncountable number of times.
>> And that is about as far as I get.
>> Install the system - sneeze ... and everything(!) goes down the drain.
>>
>> On the official Ubuntu website it says "Ubuntu is designed to be easy to
>> use",
>> on the top page of the Kubuntu site it says "Kubuntu makes your PC
>> friendly"  ......
>>
>> THAT is definitely NOT my experience.
>>
> Well I totally disagree. I have used Linux Kubuntu as my main system
> since 2007 on a number of computers and only done "total reinstallation"
> when I have chosen to do myself or have had some kind of hardware failure.
>
> Keeping a backup of some kind is vital to any user, be it a
> "professional" or not. I have over the years used Remastersys, sadly now
> abandonware, Clonezilla and Luckybackup to keep a copy not older than a
> week of my 2-3 systems and that has saved me after disk failures. Last
> one that comes to mind was my wife's laptop where the battery is dead so
> when (not if where I live but when) power goes the disk can be in the
> middle of doing whatever. It refused to boot. Took the Clonezilla and
> restored boot partition, took 5 minutes and we were back in operation.
>
> It would not have mattered if it was Windows, OS X, BSD or Linux - the
> reality is that computer systems fail at some stage and one has to be
> prepared for that.
Couldn't agree more.  Anyone who finds it impossible to maintain
stability of a linux system is committing a combination of the following
human errors:
(a) Using the wrong version for the wrong purpose (e.g. beta for
production systems);
(b) Careless about installing and/or utilising excessive application
binaries for key operations (production or administrative) rather than
items from the designated repositories for the specific linux distro you
are using
(c) Failing to identify when firmware or driver errors are the
underlying cause, and not attacking that problem at root cause ... sure,
you can blame linux-land for not doing enough to make this "easy"
(Agreed to some degree), but this is a common cause of instability and
solutions are out there for most challenges, and for the hardest
"picking the best hardware for your Linux" is often the best answer for
noobies or even tech savvy folks who don't want to deal with this stuff,
which is fair enough
(d) when committing the above errors (a)-(c) not using enough initiative
in seeking help using search for similar areas or community support
(e) suffering common hardware failures and mis-attributing that as a
"linux" problem when it is really not.  The MTBF for computer hardware
is good  but not great and you should anticipate systems breaking down,
and not blame the OS for breakdowns in your hardware

It is my belief nearly 'anyone' can operate linux ... if it were not a
stable system it could not be used for millions of production nodes at
commercial entities around the world not to mention its wide and
dispersed end user community. 

Sorry that some users have such bad experiences, but I hope they can
think a  little more about whether there is human error contributing to
that and try to up their skills a bit in order to make it work.  Its not
that hard. 

All the best

>