New thread and jumping into this discussion... On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 07:23, Gary wrote:

Interesting, and strange... If you use that command often, why not just make it an alias? A couple of keystrokes would save you all that typing, and I dare say would be less keystrokes than using ^R ..... <g>

-- Gary

My primary Linux computer is a laptop, so I am always shutting it down. Having recently converted from Mandrake to SuSe 9.0 Pro. I found it annoying that my regular user account could not shutdown or restart the computer. Having to log off and then shutdown from the display manager was getting very tiresome and opening a console to SU so I could shutdown was almost as bad. While I appreciate the SuSe developers attention to security, not all installations of Linux need to be so tightly locked down. Since a laptop is almost always a single user machine there is no need to worry about another user shutting it down while you are working. My solution to this problem was to creating a symlink in /usr/bin to /sbin/shutdown ln -s /sbin/shutdown /usr/bin/shutdown Then I set SUID to the link. chmod u+s /sbin/shutdown Finally, I created a launcher pointing to /usr/bin/shutdown and added it to the panel next to clock display. Now when I'm ready to shutdown I simply have to click the icon and the laptop shutdown. No fuss no muss. * * * While I'm on the subject of Linux on laptops I would like to point out that anyone running Linux on a laptop has different needs than someone running Linux on a desktop or a server. For instance when have you ever seen a desktop or server that needed PCMCIA? Yet every major distribution installs it whether the machine needs it or not. Another thing about PCMCIA is that every distribution wants to start the network *before* starting PCMCIA. On a laptop, it should be the other way a round. While it is true most laptops have built-in Ethernet adapters now, including my Dell Latitude, it is almost never used. What is used, however, is the wireless adapter and even though it is internal it is still PCMCIA. On my laptops I have changed the startup order for PCMCIA so it starts before the network service. This simple thing ensures that I get an IP-address from a DHCP server every time I turn on my computer. It does not matter whether I am at home, at work or in a hotel with wireless access. I always get an IP address and I don't have to mess around with creating profiles. It just works. This is such a simple thing but not one distribution does it by default. BTW I am really beginning to become annoyed with SuSeconfig. Every time I run YAST2 or YOU it changes the startup order of the services in /etc/rc.d/rc5.d back to the SuSe defaults. Completely, ignoring what *I* need. SuSe is not alone in ignoring laptop users. None of the distributions I have used have a package group and default configuration designed specifically for laptops. According to industry experts Laptops/Portable computing devices with wireless networks access are going to become the predominate computer used by 2006. (It already is in my home. I have two laptops with wireless connections and my wife's desktop is wireless.) The first Linux distributor to provide a package selection and configuration specifically designed for laptops will be way ahead of the game. I would like to hope that it would be SuSe. -- Chuck Stuettgen Homepage http://www.cfs-tech.homelinux.net