Maybe somebody already proposed this (I didn't get the beginning of the thread), but wat about APCI?
If your computer is fairly recent, you should be able to configure it - with some time & luck - to react the way a windowspc does: just hit the power button, and it will shutdown itself gracefully. (You'll probably have to recompile your kernel, and will have to use apcid) By pressing the power button, an event will be generated. The APCI daemon (who runs as root) listens and then decides - based on the event - what to do with it. The standard behavior is doing a poweroff (by using shutdown) Problem solved (I hope) ;-) Dries
