Newbie help

[Hodgins Family]

Good morning!

On Sat, 2005-02-26 at 11:29 +0100, Thomas Kaiser wrote:
> Why is it not possible to shut down the computer with the power switch?
> 
> My coffee machine has a power switch I press there to turn it on and I 
> press on the same switch to turn it off again. Shouldn't it be the same 
> with a computer? ?

A short answer might be that turning the power off to a coffee maker
ends one process (heating the liquid). Turning the power off to a
computer terminates many processes (some in RAM, some in temporary
holding areas on the drive). And the OS needs some time to terminate and
clean up the leftovers of those processes before powering off. Not safe
or clean other-wise.

> As far as I remember, on a Sun workstation you can just 
> press the power switch to shutdown the workstation. It is also possible 
> with with windowz XP. Just press the powerswitch and windowz XP will 
> shut down. How about Ubuntu? Can I just press the powerswitch and Ubuntu 
> shuts down cleanlly
> Thomas

OK, trash my short answer! I didn't know that. Hey, Sun people out
there, is this true? Does hitting the power off button cause the the OS
to go through its shutdown process or does it just kill the power? And
yeah, how hard is it to have an OS monitor the power switch so that when
the switch is hit, the OS goes into shutdown?

Rob