Simple graphical kill in GNOME

Under KDE you can press CTRL+ALT+ESC and get a cursor which will then kill any application that you click on. It’s a handy little feature.

Under GNOME, you need to open System Monitor, select the “Processes” tab, find the process in the list, select it and hit “End Process.” However today at work, Evolution crashed on Justin’s PC rendering the rest of GNOME unworkable. To fix this I just switched to TTY1 and killed Evolution, but it got me thinking how handy the same key shortcut would be under GNOME. After all, I couldn’t open System Monitor to kill anything.

The program KDE uses is called xkill, so it’s very easy to set up under GNOME. Just install it (by default it exists under Ubuntu, under Fedora install xorg-x11-apps) and open System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts.

In that window, add a new shortcut, giving it a name and typing the command as xkill. Then you should see it in the list. Click on the right hand side to activate a key combination, hold down CTRL+ALT+ESC and it should add it there. Close that window.

Now you should be able to press CTRL+ALT+ESC and get your little cursor to kill any running program you want, simply by clicking on it. Simple work around, but might be useful to someone else.