Comment 6 for bug 28798

I agree that entering sleep mode should happen when you just close the lid of a laptop, and that you don't need a dialog for that. But 1) If your computer is a desktop and you still want to let it sleep (I do this very often with my Powermac when I don't use it), there's no other option than just choose Sleep from the menu (same in OS X). 2) We provide another function, Hibernate, and Mac OS X doesn't have it AFAIK, so we need a way to let people use it. Since Sleep and Hibernate have different effects, and I believe a lot of users will use/need/like both of them, but not in the same situations, I guess they should appear in the menu ? Your laptop should sleep when its lid is closed, but what can you do to let it "Hibernate", apart from using the menu ?

But you're right that the difference between the two is clearly not obvious. And an icon cannot replace a clear explanation. That's why I used tooltips in my previous dialog, as you can see right here :

http://www.manucornet.net/ubuntu/JPEG/Logout_dialog_tooltips.png

(the hibernate tooltips clearly explains that the computer won't be needing or using any power during hibernation). I wrote those sentences, but I'm sure someone else (a native English speaker ^^) will find a better wording. I don't know whether just explaining what it does in the tooltips is enough, but I can't find a better way right now.

About the new dialogs, actually they're not mine, they come from upstream ;-) Vincent Untz is the one to thank for them. In Ubuntu we'll make it slightly different, for now :

* The two menu entries (Shut Down and Log Out) will remain pretty much the same as now, but maybe with icons in the dialog buttons (I'll try and tweak that, soon).

* The applet that will be added in the upper right corner of the screen will bring the "complete" dialog (the one I designed, although there's still some work to do with it), with all 6 options.

Again, this will probably be temporary, so that we can see how people like it and have a little time to see what to do.

Thank you again for your feedback ! These are not obvious problems and we definitely need some brainstorming to get it right :)