Shutting down applications and systems

Killing Fields

Article from Issue 145/2012

Author(s): Bruce Byfield

Linux offers a variety of tools for shutting down systems and processes. We describe some important commands.

Compared with Windows, Linux offers a stable operating system. Every now and again, however, you will need to intervene to stop an application that has frozen or misbehaved. You might also want to shut down the entire system because you want to reboot with a new kernel or edit partitions – or simply because you prefer not to leave your machine running because of the risk of thunderstorms. In any of these situations, you can often use desktop tools, but, as usual, working from the command line gives you more options.

Besides, if your system is experiencing problems, a desktop tool is probably more likely to misbehave than a command-line tool. There’s simply more that can go wrong.

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