Shutdown problems on a Compaq V2000 laptop

[tom68]

I am new to forum and if I had read the posts here about the problems people have here with the os in my case ubuntu 12.04 I doubt I would have installed it. I like many others are having shutdown problems and I look at all the try this and that posts to fix the problem and they dont work. I have tried some and cant get it right. It is probably more of a problem for people like myself who are not real computer savvy. Going into the terminal type this command and that try this and that, what is going on? There is a sticky about command lines on who is to stop someone from screwing up your computer by typing in different commands? I only hope the new version 14.04 coming out soon will fix some of these problems. Its my fault I dont know more maybe. I have 2 systems running windows xp on computers that are about 6 years old and thought I could extend the life by trying linux. That is not going to work if I have to keep doing a hard shutdown all the time. I have a compaq v2000 laptop is it the driver? the graphic card? is this turned off is that turned on? Yeah xp was less secure and you gotta install updates all the time but everything worked. What to do. Just venting sorry.

[mörgæs]

Did you ever consider that only people with problems are writing here? There could be a vast number of satisfied users who never need to post.

Please don't begin bitching until you know for a fact that your hardware has a problem. Begin with a live boot of X/Lubuntu 13.10, if anything looks strange post a neutral description and someone will help you.

[jdeca57]

Yes, you can find commands that hurt your computer on the internet. However if you read something like
sudo shutdown now -h
chances are the computer simply shuts down...
And as said, don't wait for 14.04. On old hardware chances are good that the lighter versions of 12.04 wil work as well or better. There is no such thing as endless backward compatibility.

[Toz]

Changed title of thread to be somewhat more descriptive of the problem.

[gigix85]

I second jdeca57 on this. Usually commands have fairly obvious meanings, such as "shutdown" or "reboot".

You might also want to break down your post into smaller paragraphs in the future. For instance, your specific issue, and then your rant. Regarding your issue, jdeca57's solution works like 99% of the time on a sane system.

Considering your hardware (2004 laptop), you might want to use a lighter desktop environment than the default flavour of Ubuntu (Unity), such as Xubuntu (which uses XFCE). What you think is your computer not shutting down could be a general lack of responsiveness due to the heavy load of running your dekstop. You should probably stick with 12.04 for now, get it to work with a lighter desktop (Xubuntu with XFCE, or Lubuntu with LXDE) and perhaps later consider upgrading.