You might remember that in the older distributions, Ubuntu 8.o4 and such, pressing Control-Alt-Backspace would kill the X server, and was a very useful shortcut to stop non-responding GUI apps without restarting the computer.
The newer versions of X have this shortcut disabled by default, since many were inadvertently pressing it, and losing important data.
This was easily fixed by editing the DontZap option in Xorg.conf or by using a little program to change it for you.
But,
DontZap is no longer an X server option
Instead, it is now handled by XKB.
That makes it even easier re-enable the key combo, though.
GNOME
- Open System > Preferences > Keyboard
- Select the “Layouts” and click “Layout options“
- Select “Key sequence to kill the X server
- Check the “Control + Alt + Backspace” box
KDE
- Open System Settings
- Go to “Regional & Language” > “Keyboard Layout“
- Move to the Layouts tab and select the “Enable keyboard layouts” option
- Under the Advanced tab, you will find “Key sequence to kill the X server“
- Under that, enable “Control+Alt+Backspace“
Command line or other DE
Type the following command in a terminal to immediately disable the DontZap option
setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
If it works well and you want to keep it, add it to your ~/.xinitrc file.
For more details, head over to the Ubuntu wiki page.
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Hi, My name is Narayanan and i'm your resident blogger. Technology and internet have always fascinated me and that's the reason behind the origin of this blog. Thanks for visiting Tech Spikes :)
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