is this dangerous?

[The Anti-Void]

i'm using rh7.1 w/ kde. sometimes when i want to shutdown or reboot fast i just open up a terminal window and type the commands, rather than logging out and shutting down. can this break anything if i do it often?

[Radar]

Not sure, but I tend to think not. All processes seem to get killed properly when you do it. Never had probs with it.

[stick]

NOPE, totally safe...

easiest way to know if you shut down wrong.... linux will force check the drives.... ;)

[Craig McPherson]

If you've made any changes to your Window Manager's configuration, they may not be saved. And any unsaved information in applications will be lost. Other than that, you should be fine.

[stiles]

the shutdown command flushes the incore memory to disk, so I don't think you could lose any config data. Maybe if there was a lock file in reference to a config file you were editing, but vi would complain if that was the case (probably would only let you open it read only).

[Craig McPherson]

Yes, you won't lose any files, but some programs hold configuration changes in memory and only write to configuration files when they exit. There's a difference between "shutting down cleanly" and "exiting". A program that's killed by a reboot will shut down cleanly, but it might not be programmed to go through its entire exit routine.