This is very interesting....
Yes, it will kill the desktop, but leaves you logged in.....Looking at the black screen + cursor, I could do exactly two things: ctrl-alt-esc (again) to get the "kill" symbol (but of course there was nothing left to kill) and ctrl-alt-backspace to kill the X-session completely.

So, where exactly ARE we after doing ctrl-alt-esc and killing the desktop? (Enquiring minds want to know.....)

Yes, that's what happen. See I can not go to terminal or do anything because the PC feezes and not responding to anything. This is the reason I am looking for some sort of key shortcut.

Thanks

Gah.... yes indeed firefox is a little blighter when it comes to freezing.
Unfortunately, 95% of the time, it is firefox freezing up that I have to resort to using the ctrl-alt-backspace maneuver. (The other five percent is split between GIMP and Amarok. I hate my scheduler :P )


I'd say we're in between. That void where your files get deleted to and are never recovered. :O ( all the left foot socks end up there.)

Can you even move the mouse when it freezes like that?

If not, once it is that far gone... reboot is probably all you can do. D:
Even ctrl-alt-del won't work when it is that frozen on most windows machines. (At least, it never did on any of the PCs I've seen)

Let's look at this from a different angle. What are you running that is causing your system stall and require resuscitation? Maybe you should fix the application, or merely refrain from running it.

If you launch an application from a terminal you can kill it by using 'kill', 'pkill', or merely a ctrl-C. For the first two options, there's "man" to assist you in learning how they work.

If your system has reached the point where you no longer have control (i.e. the CPU has reached its max-capacity) and thus any input you provide is "ignored" for an indefinite period of time, use the power-switch. Use it to terminate your system/OS with extreme prejudice. Very little harm will come about unless you have unsaved documents.

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace will kill X11, but not necessary an application you may have run that has gone awry.

P.S. One of the things that the Linux OS has failed to provide is a feature that prevents user applications from consuming all of the resources (i.e. CPU or RAM) of a system. That's not to say other OSes have fared better. Perhaps there should be a built-in setting that prevents a user application from acquiring too much memory and too much of the CPU utilization for an extended period of time.

Not really.

If you kill your desktop just use your keyboard shortcuts to open the Run Dialog and restart your desktop. If you kill the panels do the same.

Linux-based operating systems are very modular. Everything is its own program. If you kill the window manager all that will happen is that your applications will lose their borders & title bar, and you will not be able to move them (unless the application has a native way of doing so). New applications will each open in the top left corner. You will still be able to switch between them using the task switcher (provided there is one). And of course, the window manager can be restarted from a terminal (just like the desktop, panels or whatever part of the desktop environment you've killed) or run dialog.

Configure your keyboard shortcuts to whatever you want (typically it's Ctrl+Alt+Esc) to run xkill to kill x applications. If you fear you might click on something other than the app you want to kill, learn the executables of your environment's elements so you can easily restart them if you accidentally kill them.

In Xfce some of these are as follows:

desktop: xfdesktop
window manger: xfwm or xfwm4 (Xfce 4+)
panel: xfce-panel or xfce4-panel
taskbar: xftaskbar or xftaskbar4

Configuring shortcuts to open a run dialog (usually it's Alt+F2) is also a good idea.

Some of the run dialogs available on Linux-based systems are:
xfrun or xfrun4 (Xfce)
grun (generic, GTK-based)
fbrun (FluxBox)
bbrun (BlackBox)
(you can use any of these regardless of environment)

Check your repositories and they should be there.

If this happens just restart the desktop.

Your in the X server but your desktop manager is now no longer running.

Where exactly are you after doing this depends on the type of window manager that you are using or mabye not im not 100% sure on that one.

Or Epiphany, Thunar, oggConvert, gThumb, ClamTk and a myriad of others.

BTW many distributions have a graphical way to manage (view, stop, etc.) all running processes. In Xubuntu and Ubuntu (and other systems with Gnome installed) it's called System Monitor (gnome-system-monitor) which can be run using a shortcut key combination, like Ctrl+Alt+Del if you like.

Check your shortcut key & X server configuration, maybe Ctrl+Alt+Esc is set to reboot.

You shouldn't do a "9" the first time...

You should try kill -HUP <PID>

If that doesn't work then try kill -INT <PID>

THEN if that doesn't work then you should resort to kill -9 <PID>

Doing a "9" runs the risk of making zombie processes