You can shutdown or restart your desktop or server with a simple command in bash. It could come in very handy if you ssh into your server or desktop. In this example I a doing it in Suse in a Root Terminal, these same commands can be applied in just about any linux distrobution such as Ubuntu. Please note if you are doing this in Ubuntu you will need super user rights or put the sudo command in front of these commands. (Example: sudo shutdown -r now

open up a terminal window

To restart your computer right away type in shutdown -r now

If you want the system to restart in 1 minute type in shutdown -r 1

To just just turn off your computer type shutdown -h now

If you want to cancel a shutdown you can use the command shutdown -c