Using the console, I used to switch off my PC with Ctrl-Alt-Del. For that to work, I had these lines in /etc/inittab: # What to do when CTRL-ALT-DEL is pressed. ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/poweroff It was the easiest way to switch off the machine that I knew of. Now is there something similar with systemd? Ctrl-Alt-Del appears to reboot the machine now.