Comments on: Kill X session in Jaunty Jackalope

By: Peng’s links for Sunday, 29 Mar « I’m Just an Avatar

Peng’s links for Sunday, 29 Mar « I’m Just an Avatar — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:03:25 +0000

[...] Duchatelle: Kill X session in Jaunty Jackalope. The devs have decided that users don’t want to be able to use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace as an [...]

By: Evan

Evan — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:11:05 +0000

I’m using the dontzap package now, because Alt+PrntScrn+K logouts weren’t very clean (produced graphics garbage). Ctrl+Alt+Backspace looks much nicer.

I wonder, why is there a difference? Each must have its own way of restarting X.

By: Evan

Evan — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:08:25 +0000

Thanks for the heads up on this! I was puzzling for a few minutes on how to close my session in Jaunty without using the mouse, since Ctrl+Alt+Backspace wasn’t doing it, and you can’t make it happen from the Ctrl+Alt+Delete menu.

Observation: I think the new combination works with Alt, too (substitute for AltGr). That is to say, both Alt+SysRq+K and Alt+PrntScrn+K seem to work, in addition to the AltGr+SysRq+K and AltGr+PrntScrn+K combos given in the original post.

By: Seth

Seth — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:25:06 +0000

@Stemp

I *am* deffo a ‘savvy’ user and I managed to hit ctrl-alt-backspace quite a few times by accident. I *do* know what happened then.

I’m just a fast typist and a ‘no-mouse’ user. When working in Opera e.g. I use very rapid combinations of azxsqw keys for navigation, Ctrl-T, Ctrl-Alt-Shift-N, and depending on where my fingers are on the keyboard I’ll use z, backspace, alt-left, or alt-backspace to ‘go back’. The killer is when I clone a tab (ctrl-alt-shift-N) and then truncate the URL to the last slash (ctrl-backspace). On a number of occasions I’m slighltly slow lifting the modifier keys and I (uhoh) kill X.

Another ‘near miss key’ is when working with various vritual machines (VMWare/Virtual Box come to mind). Some of them remap Ctrl-Alt-Delete to interesting variations (Ctrl-Alt-Insert, Ctrl-Alt-End, RightControl-Delete). Since I *do* sometimes consciously hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (to avoid saving config items e.g., to test app robustness, to get out of a OOM-killer suspension when I forget to use ulimit early or just to win time) I do sometimes out of confusion land on the wrong key.

I do blame my fast (sometimes rushed) keyboard behaviour, I don’t mind the old zap key, I like the new one as well – less confusion, but I can totally see the point: I’d have a hard time explaining my mom that Ctrl-Backspace deletes the last word in OO Writer, Alt-Backspace jumps to the last bookmark/insert location, but you better not accidentally mix the two :).

By: RSS Week #49: letture per il weekend - Matteo Moro

RSS Week #49: letture per il weekend - Matteo Moro — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 09:09:30 +0000

[...] Kill X session in Jaunty Jackalope [...]

By: bapoumba

bapoumba — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:57:32 +0000

@ Sathya: you’re welcome :)

By: Sathya

Sathya — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:38:14 +0000

@bapoumba I installed Jaunty, and yes you were right, the Ctrl+Alt + bksp twice doesn’t work. thanks for the links!

By: bapoumba

bapoumba — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:10:26 +0000

The dontzap Jaunty package will allow to enable previous behavior: http://albertomilone.com/wordpress/?p=335

For the rationale:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88859
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg-bugzilla-noise/2004-September/003354.html
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/95258
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2008-September/038786.html

Hmm..

By: Stemp

Stemp — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:49:40 +0000

How could you accidentally trigger CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE ?
You wanted to click on the key left to Backspace with an uppercase, you missed both keys and then you pushed the Alt key with your elbow ? :D

By: Sathya

Sathya — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:20:10 +0000

@ bapoumba SUSE, has the same Xserver settings, so I’m guessing its very much possible