Leaving Your System

When you have finished using the computer, there are several options for leaving your system. Some of them will leave the system running, others will shutdown the computer. If your system provides power management, you can also choose to suspend your computer. In this state, it will consume considerably less power than usual and will start much faster than after a complete shutdown and reboot. For more information, refer to Chapter 9, Controlling Your Desktop’s Power Management.

You can access all the options to leave your system from the main menu. Click the main menu icon on the left and switch to the Leave tab. Select one of the following options:

Logout

Ends your current session and leaves your system running. If not configured otherwise in the KDE 4 Personal Settings, the session manager will restore the currently open windows by default the next time you log in to KDE 4. Find more information about the session manager and configuration options at Procedure 3.16, “Adjusting the Session Handling”.

Lock

Prevents unauthorized access by others by locking your screen and starting a screen saver. Access to the session can only be regained with a password. To unlock, enter your normal login password. For information about configuring your screen saver, see Procedure 3.7, “Configuring the Screen Saver”.

Switch User

Starts a second session with a graphical user interface on your machine. Your current session remains active while you are taken to the login screen where you can log in as a different user. You can access the first session again by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7. To access a new session, press F8 instead of F7. Additional sessions can be accessed by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F9 to F12.

If more than one desktop environment is installed on your system, you can also choose to switch to another desktop for the new session as described in Section 1.4, “Switching Desktops”.

Hibernate

This menu item is only available if your computer provides power management functionality. Pauses your computer without logging you out. All your data and the session data is saved to disk before the system is laid to rest. It is thus protected against data loss should you lose power in the meantime. Waking the system up again is much faster than with a fresh boot.

Sleep

This menu item is only available if your computer provides power management functionality. Pauses your computer without logging you out. All your data and the session data is saved to RAM. Bringing the system up again is faster than restoring a session from disk.

Shutdown Computer

Logs you out and turns your computer off.

Restart Computer

Initiates the shutdown process and reboots your computer. Instead of selecting the desired boot option in the boot manager, you can also select the desired option directly—just click one of the options below Restart Computer.

Alternatively, you can also use the desktop context menu or the icons in the system tray to leave your system.

If you have already logged out, you can still access shutdown and restart option from the login screen by clicking Menu and selecting the relevant menu items.