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I don't know if anyone else remembers, but I think it was either Windows 95 or Windows 98 which, after selecting shut down, the eventual result would be a messa

I don't know if anyone else remembers, but I think it was either Windows 95 or Windows 98 which, after selecting shut down, the eventual result would be a message that said, "It is now safe to turn off your computer." I remember thinking it was magic when the computer would actually turn itself off at this point. This article provides a good explanation for why that behavior was necessary.

yuhong 15y ago
Power off uses APM or ACPI and is not related.
- notYoursAtAll 15y ago
  "How to shut down a PC" no mention of Linux, but apparently that is the topic. But since it's not mentioned in the topic, it's going to come up. Personally I use a batch file and SysInternals to shutdown (after forcing bad-behavior apps to exit). Sounds like you need a SysInternals for Linux??
  - kelnos 15y ago
    The software that you use on top of your OS to ask your OS to reboot is irrelevant. We're talking about what the OS has to do to the hardware to get it to reboot. The blog post even notes that Linux 3.0 will be attempting to mimic the kludgey way in which Windows tries to get your machine to reboot.
quux 15y ago
Yup, I remember that. IIRC when this screen was displayed, the system was actually at a DOS prompt, just not in character mode. You could type "win" to restart windows for instance, and I think there was some magic command to reset the display adapter and get a working DOS prompt.
kronusaturn 15y ago
No, that was a completely different issue. Before ATX the power supply could not be controlled by software at all—it only had a mechanical switch, often near the back of the machine rather than in front, because that's where the power supply was. This article is about rebooting, as in resetting all the hardware without turning off the power. The original IBM PC had a well defined way to do this, but after decades of clones and clones of clones there's no longer any one method that's guaranteed to work on any machine.

yuhong 15y ago

Power off uses APM or ACPI and is not related.

notYoursAtAll 15y ago
"How to shut down a PC" no mention of Linux, but apparently that is the topic. But since it's not mentioned in the topic, it's going to come up. Personally I use a batch file and SysInternals to shutdown (after forcing bad-behavior apps to exit). Sounds like you need a SysInternals for Linux??
- kelnos 15y ago
  The software that you use on top of your OS to ask your OS to reboot is irrelevant. We're talking about what the OS has to do to the hardware to get it to reboot. The blog post even notes that Linux 3.0 will be attempting to mimic the kludgey way in which Windows tries to get your machine to reboot.

quux 15y ago

Yup, I remember that. IIRC when this screen was displayed, the system was actually at a DOS prompt, just not in character mode. You could type "win" to restart windows for instance, and I think there was some magic command to reset the display adapter and get a working DOS prompt.

kronusaturn 15y ago

No, that was a completely different issue. Before ATX the power supply could not be controlled by software at all—it only had a mechanical switch, often near the back of the machine rather than in front, because that's where the power supply was. This article is about rebooting, as in resetting all the hardware without turning off the power. The original IBM PC had a well defined way to do this, but after decades of clones and clones of clones there's no longer any one method that's guaranteed to work on any machine.