Possible Duplicate:
How do I get “restart” option in the shutdown menu in Unity?
Can anyone possibly give me a solution to regain the restart button from the power button (top right corner button), so that I can instantly shut down without any dialog box besides getting the ability to restart directly?
This is by design (by ubuntu developers).
Numerous users have complained about this and filed bugs regarding it. But the Ubuntu developers have not been responsive to implementing this feature request. The situation is much worse for users who use dconf-editor to disable the unnecessary "are you sure" prompts that appear when users request Shutdown, Logoff, etc. When this is activated, there literally is no way to shutdown via GUI.
You only have two options (far as I know) to Restart the computer in 12.04. Use the cumbersome and inefficient "are you sure" prompt that occurs when you select Shutdown.... Or restart via Terminal (which involves having to type in your password everytime!) with the command sudo shutdown -r 0
