[Voltage]

I have tested latest releases of Mandrake, Red Hat and Debian on two new machines, Intel 815 and 845 series motherboards. None of these Linux releases can do a power down. When attempting a power down they go through all the steps, then halt without completing the power down. Win9X and XP power down just fine. When I raised this on each of the appropriate companies beta developement forums I pretty much got the same answer..OH, your systems are new and use ACPI power management but the new Linux releases work correctly with the older APM power management. You have to recompile the kernal to bring in support for new systems, or you can power down using the power switch!

So much for being new and modern!

[Cboldt]

You have to recompile the kernal to bring in support for new systems, or you can power down using the power switch!

Try `halt -p`

Depending on your distro, you may also want to adjust the 'halt' script in the startup suite. On Redhat and Mandrake that'd be /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt

ACPI is a pain, so far. I managed to get it up under 2.4.18 (patched the kernel, etc.), but it has a long way to go. I like that Linux makes it so whatever handles are available on the hardware are visible to the user.

[Campion]

You have to recompile the kernal to bring in support for new systems, or you can power down using the power switch!

You should recompile the kernel to match your configuration anyway. Otherwise, you're just using some Swiss Army knife thing that the distribution authors thought would boot up and mostly work on the largest possible number of machines.

Incidentally, the decision about how to configure those "default install" kernels that come with the distribution is made by the authors of the distribution, not by anyone involved with the kernel.