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I have been playing around with Ubuntu installing new themes and and docks. Sometimes during the installation, whole screen just hangs. What is the best way in Ubuntu to Kill a process/application? Anything similar to Ctrl + Alt + Del of windows?

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You'll want to be careful when killing installation processes. It can leave your machine in an inconsistent state. While this may not be such a big deal when installing customization packages, you'll want to make sure that you're not doing something akin to a kernel upgrade at the same time! (I've fragged an Ubuntu installation doing this) – Nick Pascucci Nov 16 '10 at 6:10

6 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

In System->Admin you have an application called System Monitor, this is the equivalent of the windows task manager.

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I usually bind it to the CTRL+ESC combo as soon as I finish installing the SO. You can bind it to any combo using System->Preferences->Keyboard Shorcuts. – Javier Rivera Nov 16 '10 at 10:40
up vote 12 down vote

Not quite like CtrlAltDel of Windows, but you can also kill with xkill. Just go to the "run" dialog (Alt+F2), type in xkill and your mouse pointer will change to an "x". Point on the application that you want to kill and click, and it'll be killed. Can sometimes be much quicker than loading the System Monitor.

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up vote 3 down vote

If you right click on the Gnome panel, and choose "Add to Panel", on the list you'll find a "Force Quit" button. If you add that to the panel, you can click on it, and then on an unresponsive program, to kill it.

You might also want to learn about the kill and killall command line programs.

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Thanks frabjous. – t3ch Nov 16 '10 at 12:14
up vote 3 down vote

If your screen hangs, you can switch to virtual console (Alt-Ctrl-F1), login with your user, type top, detect CPU eating process, and then run skill process_name. If it is system (root) process, use sudo skill process_name

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Extender, Alt-Ctrl-F1 isnt working. – t3ch Nov 16 '10 at 12:15
In that case, press Alt-PrtScr-K (you will lost unsaved docs, as your session will be restarted) – Extender Nov 16 '10 at 16:08
up vote 3 down vote

You can also restart X.Type Ctrl+Alt+Backspace

In ubuntu 10.04 these keys will be disabled by default.To enable it,

  • Goto System-->Preferences-->Keyboard

  • Select the Layouts tab and click on the Options button.

  • Select Key sequence to kill the X server and enable Control + Alt + Backspace.

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up vote 0 down vote

Firstly you should know the PID of the application you want to kill.

you can use ps to get this.

ps aux | grep "$appName" | grep -v 'grep'

Then use kill.(Ensure you have the privilege to kill it.)

kill  "$PID"
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pkill might also be useful here. – Broam Nov 16 '10 at 18:55
@Broam :Yes,pgrepcan also list the PID of application. – kit.yang Nov 17 '10 at 1:13

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