#5267 LOW Never A: Soft reboot ("refresh")

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#5267: Soft reboot ("refresh")
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  Reporter:  ffm               |       Owner:  Eben          
      Type:  enhancement       |      Status:  new           
  Priority:  low               |   Milestone:  Never Assigned
 Component:  interface-design  |     Version:                
Resolution:                    |    Keywords:                
  Verified:  0                 |  
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Comment(by Eben):

 Yeah, this indeed would be a much quicker option, and likely would be the
 more frequently needed.  Nonetheless, I really hate to lay out too many
 seemingly similar options. (Consider the old Windows menu...here's a
 nicely informed rant about it:
 http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html)

 With what "probability" will one need to perform a true reboot?  In other
 words, how many kinds of things can go wrong that would require it instead
 of restarting X.  If the answer is "not many", then perhaps we could
 simplify and offer only "Restart" and "Shut Down", with restart being the
 soft restart mentioned above.  If the need for true restart isn't
 frequent, then doing a shutdown and pressing the power button to turn it
 back on really isn't ''that'' big a deal.

 Another nice thing Apple does (at least, I find it nice) is abide by the
 notion of the option key (in our case the alt key) as a modifier used to
 perform a variation on an action - even within menus.  As such, the user
 could have a "Restart" option that would change to "Reboot" if the alt key
 was held down.  This would make it easily accessible for those that needed
 it, without cluttering up the Home XO menu with confusing options that are
 seldom used.

 On a design note, I think that if we do introduce a "restart" option, we
 should do it right and put a little bit of work into making it seem
 lightweight. Specifically, we should nicely transition to the first frame
 of the startup sequence (white stroke XO on gray) and then back again,
 instead of dropping out to a bunch of text scrolling up the screen.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5267#comment:2>
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