[kristopolous]

here's another for the list:

systemctl reboot -f should be the default for "reboot".

People generally already make sure there's nothing they care about running and then issue a reboot often because something is broken.

It's already mostly a manual override. The default makes it not a manual override but instead yet another operation of a system that is, under most reboot conditions, assumed to be tainted in some way.

If you want reboot to potentially require IPMI or some kind of manual intervention, it should be an option like

reboot --ask-everything --stall-on-crash-ok --wait-indefinitely-ok

or something that makes it very very clear what you're asking it to do.

Because how it currently is, reboot does not reboot, instead it inquires a potentially malfunctioning system what its opinion is on rebooting.

It effectively assumes every system is always in pristine condition and that users reboot out of boredom. If someone’s issuing a reboot, it's because something is wrong, and the system should treat that as the primary assumption.

[godelski]

  > systemctl reboot -f should be the default for "reboot".

I very much disagree. This is not what I want and certainly you can recognize that this is an unsafe operation, right? Less safe operations should ALWAYS require more work. Not everyone checks and it is also easy to forget or miss something.

  > reboot --ask-everything --stall-on-crash-ok --wait-indefinitely-ok

I like the --ask-everything option but I'm not sure how the other 2 can work. A crash, especially during shutdown, can have no guarantees of being caught. Or do you mean crashing user programs? Well then that's --force, right? The --wait-indefinitely-ok seems a bit weird too. Shouldn't that be configured in your boot options (or bootctl)? I do think there's reasons you might want this in one situation but not another so flag sounds good.

  > If someone’s issuing a reboot, it's because something is wrong

On personal machines: >9/10 times I'm rebooting because I installed a new kernel. Granted I'm usually running an arch distro, but even on other machines it's pretty similar.

On servers, yes, you're right, I reboot far less and am usually rebooting because a specific GPU server has a defective GPU that is often a pain to solve with rmmod and resetting manually, being just far easier to reboot the entire machine.

But I still think it's clear that what you think is "average" or "usual" is not. Literally the fact that you and I disagree on what our typical use cases is proof of this (note: I'm not saying _my average_ use case extrapolates, nor your average use case, nor anyone else I know or even don't know. I'm saying _average_ is not a meaningful thing. I mean this in the same way as taking the average of 2 samples from a normal distribution; doing so gives you a number that is not representative of the distribution).

[kristopolous]

Average is not the advocacy, it's plurality.

Some behavior has to be chosen for some invocation.

I continue to express what countless people struggle with and potential usability fixes, and you continue to insist your personal preference is supreme and unilaterally invalidates everyone's frustration.

It's like insisting all cars should have tillers, manual chokes, and hand cranks because you personally like them and then handwaving some "average" argument when someone advocates for easier systems.

And that's the attitude what keeps Linux useful but not usable.