Well all OSes have bad programs, Linux has it too. Some times they stop responding and unlike windows, they don’t make the whole OS unresponsive. The application alone is unresponsive but you can still use other applications normally. Killing an unresponsive application is fairly easy job in Ubuntu.
Bring the unresponsive application to the front, the app must be having a desaturated look because its unresponsive (if its not, check again… it must not be unresponsive). Launch the terminal and type:
$ xkill
The mouse cursor will change to a cross, click anywhere on the unresponsive application and it will be killed.
To get things done faster, you can type xkill in “Run application” dialog box too. Press Alt+F2 to bring the run dialog box and type xkill and enter. The mouse cursor will change to cross and click on unresponsive app to kill it.
Alternatively, you can use the System Monitor (System->Administration->System Monitor). In the processes tab, right click the process you want to kill, and select kill process. Note that this method requires some expertise on which process represents which application. You are better off using the previous method if you don’t know what the process name for the application is.
There’s one more method of process killing. Type the following in terminal:
ps -d | grep “process-name”
It will list all the process with that process name along with the process ID (PID).
then type this:
kill -s KILL pid
PID is taken from the previous command and written into this one. That process which has this process-id will be killed.
I hope you liked this tutorial.
Cheers!