shutting down

[Kyrath. (AKA Rob)]

Hi all,

I just found out, the hard way, that there is a very distinct method of shutting down linux.  You'd figure that the importance of doing it correctly would be emphasized almost immediately after istallation.  Oh well...

I ended up doing a complete reinstall.  I don't know if that was necessary, but when I started the pc, speakup would start and linux seemed to go through the equivalent of a scan disk.  I noticed that at some point, the numpad keys lost control of speakup.  Although speakup kept going until the login prompt, it apparently was just reading off its buffer because speakup was completely unresponsive.
Was there something I could have done other than a complete reinstall?
Also, the slackware book listed a few ways to shutdown the system.  They were:
    shutdown -h now
    halt
    telinit 0
I'm just wondering if the other flavors of linux use these same commands for shutting down?

-- Rob