Distributions

I use Linux based operating systems exclusively - but different distributions of those. While the various init systems or package managers are described on separate wiki pages, this one deals with other commonalities between the Linux distributions I use and particularities of each one.

General

Gently restarting a Linux system

As described in this blog post

Holding down Alt and SysRq (which is the Print Screen key) while slowly typing REISUB will get you safely restarted. REISUO will do a shutdown rather than a restart.

This functionality is based on Magic System Requests. As per this discussion in the Linux Kernel mailing list, S (sync) and U (umount) are not necessary anymore on modern filesystems.

Debian and Debian-based distributions

Debian

Trisquel GNU/Linux

DietPi

Alpine and Alpine-base distributions

Alpine

postmarketOS

OpenWrt

GNU Guix System