something I use in windoze quite alot is the ctl-alt-del to display what is currently running, and ending something if necessary. What's the linux way of doing this?

You can use "Alt+Tab" to see your different applications, but you cannot close them this way like windows 9x can.

well, in the console if you mean getting a list of running apps ("ps ax") and the killing 'em ("kill -s KILL $(pidof <offending appname>") should do (or use "top"). In IceWM we got a list of windows under the 3rd mousebutton, else use an app like "top", taskmgrs like qps or tkKillProc or xkill (only visible apps). ctrl+alt+del on most boxes is defined in /etc/inittab for rebooting, on my boxen it gives an explanation of SysRq...

ok on all that. but does just killing stuff in linux cause problems sometimes?
You know how, in windoze, when you cancel something, sometimes nothing works right afterwards... of course, thats windoze, not linux, just wondering though... In windoze, sometimes you try to get out of something gracefully, but...its "reset button time again..."

in a console, you use 'ps aux' to get a full list of EVERYTHING running, then you can take the pid# and run

kill pid#

and if that don't work:

kill -KILL pid#

you can also use

killall name-of-program

but it's less powerful and flexible.

in X, you should be able to kill any app from the task bar (in gnome, kde) or there's a program called xkill which turns your mouse into a target, and then will destroy any program you click on.

anything else?

I was wondering what that thing does!!!

yea, I love that xkill thing. Its just that in windoze when you look at what's running, there may be like 10 things listed and you dont know what hell some of them are. sometimes I just cancel everything except explorer & systray, like if I'm gonna burn a CD or something. In windoze things interfere with each other.

Yeah thats what sux about windows 9x. Windows NT/2000/XP have a a very good process management system that pops up when you press "ctrl+alt+delete". Windows XP has even more cool stuff in there, and you can see whats it doing.

well, I have 98SE, and I think it will be the last one for me. I'll try to get to be a linux power-user. Course, that takes time and my wife is already saying "you go up there on your computer every day after work for HOURS!". I just say I'm tryin' to re-learn everything I know about computers.
I hope linux doesn't get too bloated like windoze, where it does everything for you even if you're a complete idiot.
I don't wanna be no sheep.

Relationships, who needs em? ;-)

Try using KDE Sytem Guard, ctrl+esc (from within KDE obviously)

I similarly need to Ctrl-Alt-Del or something like that. The screen is utterly unresponsive - I have no way of getting to my command prompt to run a command there, I can't click onto the task bar (which won't render anyway).

This happened this time while doing an Oracle install (which seems to be stuck) and after the screensaver had come up - moving the mouse wiped the screensaver away, but the real screen only partially refreshed and won't show me so much as a mouse pointer. Basically, I need a way to get "beneath" the GUI... there's GOT to be a better way than the power switch. Things like this have happened a couple times before, but I don't remember the exact circumstances.

I've tried Ctrl+Alt+Del, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+Esc, Ctrl+Break, and smacking the keyboard with my face.

I'm using GNOME - everything pretty much out-of-the-box defaults.

welcome to LQ! ctrl-alt-bkspace will kill X and return you to the console, but you should be able to get a console with alt-ctrl-f1up to ctrl-alt-f7 anyway. Does this not work? It's extremely rare for linux (as in the kernel) to seize up, so you can usually get rid of whatever program is fouling things up through the console.

Ctrl + Alt + Esc turns your cursor into a skull and crossbones. Then click title bar of offending app and it'll die quite nicely....

If that doesn't work, I usuall go to Ctrl + Alt + F5 and ps -A to get pid of offending app/process and then just kill PID#....

If that doesn't work, I kill kdm, which makes X restart for me.....

If that doesn't work.... oh, wait, it always has....

If you use Windowmaker as your desktop manager you can hit F11 and that shows you what's running and allows you to maximize any of those windows and do whatever you want with it.