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Shutdown/Reboot Ubuntu 9.10

Sometime during the Ubuntu 9.04 release, Canonical added a 60-second delay when Reboot or Shutdown was selected.
Written by J.A. Watson, Contributor

Sometime during the Ubuntu 9.04 release, Canonical added a 60-second delay when Reboot or Shutdown was selected. At that time it was at least possible to go to the "User Switcher Preferences" and disable the delay. Now, with the 9.10 release, that disable option seems to have disappeared. I've been watching for it through the entire Alpha/Beta/RC release cycle, convinced that it would reappear sooner or later. As far as I can tell, it didn't - either that, or they have put it somewhere that I can't find it.

After considerable searching, head-scratching and digging, I finally found that it is accessible via a Gnome configuration setting. That means there are two ways to change it, and eliminate the delay:

- Open a console (terminal) window, and enter this command:

gconftool-2 -s '/apps/indicator-session/suppress_logout_restart_shutdown' --type bool true

- Press Alt-F2, enter gconf-editor, navigate to apps/indicator-session and set the value of suppress_logout_restart_shutdown to true.

It's Friday afternoon, I'm not in a particularly good mood, I've been irritated about this since the first Karmic Alpha release, and it's time for a rant. Why was this changed? Why was the option to disable it hidden away where it is unlikely to ever be found? If this is the way that Ubuntu administration is going to be moving in the future, we are headed right back to the days where people said "Linux is so obscure and confusing that only geeks can use it". Massive amounts of time and effort have been put in over the past few years just to get away from having to use apt or yum commands for package management, and now we're back to this kind of stuff for such a simple option? Bah. Humbug. End of rant.

For those who, like me, really object to having to click-away this enforced wait every time, now at least you know where and how to turn it off. Have a nice day.

jw 13/11/2009

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