Defibrillator from the video game, Battlefield 2

A GUI is a very complex piece of software and there could be any number of reasons why it would lock up on you. If you need to kill your x server and then restart it, here are some tips:

Killing X server via Terminal

Open a Terminal (ex: gnome-terminal) and type:

# init 3

That will kill the x server and throw you into runlevel 3 mode (all text).  If it doesn’t find the command, then switch to the root user by typing “su -” (you will need to know the root password).

Restarting X server

If you need to restart the X server, and you’re in GUI mode, simply use the keyboard combination CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE. For the most part, it’ll work.

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