In general, say when a Linux computer freezes, what keys should you press? I go for pressing Ctrl + Alt + Backspace, which I imagine shuts down X. But, if that fails, is there anything else to try? Any other safer way than pressing the big ol' power button?

If Linux is crashing, something is really wrong. By Linux, I mean a total kernel freeze, when the lights on your keyboard blinks and you can't do anything. This is actually a hardware problem, and could be for several reasons such as unsupported hardware, wrong modules, overheat...

I've had myself a lot of kernel panics because of an on-board network card I had. A 15 bucks card fixed that matter.

I'd first try to find out why Linux is crashing. Then again, it just should not. All applications could crash: servers, KDE, Firefox, you name it. When the kernel panics it's time to look at /var/log/messages and see what's going on there

If it's the X-server that crashes, you can try to use a ctrl+alt+F[1-6] keys to go into an alternative terminal. ctrl+alt+F7 usually brings you back to the X. This may vary from one distro to another, mind you...

Again, if it's a kernel panic, you've to hard-reset the system. But as I said 100 times, that should not happen, ever

Vary rarely will a linux box actually freeze like various other OSes. You can use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, which quits X.

Perhaps a better solution is to press Ctrl-Alt-F2, which allows you to login to a second virtual terminal, and then use the "kill" command to kill the frozen app. See "man kill" for details, but the -9 switch is used for forcing an app to die immediately. Then you can press ctrl-alt-F7 to get back to your desktop.

I hope this helps
--Ian

Though my computer is working pretty well, my dad's laptop seems to freeze every so often. Last time it was because he was moving files, and around 46%, it crashed. Wouldn't respond at all. And, normally, it's not just one program -- everything crashes. Probably to do with the kernel, like you said.
Thanks . I'll bear that one in mind.
I think it might be worth doing that. Might try a different version of Linux while we're at it. "Broaden our horizons".

IBall- thank you, also, for your help. I'll probably try doing that next time.