How to kill the X server in Linux: alt-PrintScreen-k does what ctrl-alt-backspace used to doPosted on
March 4, 2013 by
Steven RosenbergI had a GNOME Shell crash just now and had to Google myself to figure out how to kill X in the post-ctrl-alt-backspace era. (That means I’ve written about this before.)
This is my first GNOME Shell crash in months. It happened while I was testing out some GNOME Shell Extensions, so I chalk it up to some dodgy Javascript in one of them.
Anyhow, let’s get down to it. If your screen freezes and you want to kill X, this is the key combination that will do it:
alt-PrintScreen-kOn your keyboard, the Print Screen key might say just that, or it could just say PrtSc, like it does on my laptop. In either case, this key combination should work. It’ll kill X and lead you back to the login screen if you’re using a display manager like GDM, or the console if you used startx to initiate your X session.
I don’t need to kill X very often, so I forget the key combination, though I’ve never forgotten ctrl-alt-backspace. Before you tell me that I can restore ctrl-alt-backspace as my X-killing keyboard command, I know this and don’t want to do it. I don’t kill X often enough, and if I did I’d just commit alt-PrintScreen-k to memory.
