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this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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Linux
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I miss a task manager-like shortcut to come out to the desktop and easily kill processes freezing the PC.
At least KDE has a shortcut in the Window Management settings that kills any window you want with a single click. You just press the key combination (Meta+Ctrl+Esc by default) and your cursor turns into a skull. Then just left click the frozen window and it closes instantly. Never had it fail, you can even kill your Desktop if you miss lol
TIL Thanks!!!
FYI, on other DE's you can just bind
xkillto whatever shorcut you want. I tried it recently and it works just fine on Wayland.IDK what desktop environment you're using... or your specific scenario... but most DE should have something like that. KDE and Gnome have a version of "system monitor" which will work very much like task manager on windows.
https://apps.kde.org/plasma-systemmonitor/
https://apps.gnome.org/SystemMonitor/
Generally there are preinstalled and already assigned a hotkey.
Cinnamon
You can always come out of everything to a separate terminal, not sure how many users actually know that.
It's not always helpful or even very friendly, but it can save butts.
Ctrl + Alt + F1 or ...F6, sometimes even up to F8. Usually desktop is at F2. Sometimes it's not. But you can check them any time.
A few select games, Notably Watch Dogs 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, probably because of Proton bugs, occasionally freeze my (Debian+i3wm) desktop. My computer is not frozen, but my desktop session is. I can take my smartphone and SSH into my desktop to kill the game's process (or Steam, which will take the game with it when it dies).
I've come to enjoy this process because I feel like some kinda movie hacker.
You should be able to switch tty to access the system directly from the pc. If you're unaware... ctrl alt f3 will switch to another terminal where you can login and access things. Generally your default sessions is in f2 (ymmv) so ctrl alt f2 should return you to your desktop where you left off once you nuke the offending pid.
How much ram you hauling? I've had similar issues when voices of the void sprung a memory leak in an earlier build, completely froze my desktop until I nuked it.
48G but that's not it. I have plenty left over whenever it happens, and running out of memory has never frozen my desktop.
Shit that's crazy. I guess the syslog might help but I know it won't give you wine/proton logs, and I've not worked out how to get at those myself yet.
Ctrl+alt+t -> xkill -> click window you want to terminate
But yes I agree that seeing a better GUI of open programs and attached processes would be good to have.
I'm sorry what? Ctrl+Alt+t is bound to opening a terminal emulator (whichever I fancy ATM) on any system I use. I know it's a Ubuntu binding but I got so used to it if I'm ever on a system that doesn't have it I just hammer it 15 times till I gather that it's not set up there so this would never work for me ๐
Yeah, i just mean open terminal then type xkill and click. I thought ctrl+alt+t was the default in ubuntu/mint
Totally. I've keybound
xkillor similar to recreate that experience.Correct me if I am wrong, if I switch away from a fullscreen application, I won't have it available to be terminated using xkill, right?
In that case you would switch back.... my thought is to add xkill or similar to a keybinding so it can be called without switching away from the thing.