I’ve recently realized that the CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE keyboard combination is no longer working in Debian unstable.
This good old well known keyboard combination to restart X is not working with my xorg 7.5+8 under my Gnome 2.30 desktop
However thanksfully there is another combination to kill the X server if for instance if your Gnome desktop hangs.
If that happens simply press ALT + PRINTSCREEN + K this will kill your X and then reload the (Gnome Display manager) gdm.
Another suggestion I’ve red in the forums of a way to enable back CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE is to put in either .bashrc or .xinitrc the following command
setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
BTW It’s better that the above command is placed in ~/.xinitrc.
I’ve also red on some forums that in newer releases of Ubuntu. The CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE can be enabled using a specific command, e.g. with:
dontzap -disable
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Tags: Alt, Alternative way to kill X in Linux with CTRL+PRTSCR+K, backspace, bashrc, command, Ctrl, Debian, Desktop, dontzap, GDM, Gnome, gnome desktop, instance, keyboard, keyboard combination, Linux, manager, nbsp, option, Press, printscreen, setxkbmap, suggestion, Ubuntu, way, x server, Xorg
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I had never heard of this before. I’m very glad I stumbled on your post, because I’ve been trying for a couple hours to enable this in LXDE, which is a bit less pre-configured with convenient gui’s than Gnome Ubuntu (but a lot faster). This made short work of that problem!! It’s funny that I didn’t think it worked at first, but it turns out it has to be typed in with normal US keymapping–I type using Dvorak. It works like Alt-SysReq-REISUB, AltGr-PrSc-K only works with regular US keys. Anyway, Thanks, you helped me out!
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