Three Wise Men

Lately I am toying with an idea of making video blog. But since I am still camera shy and I prefer to be the man behind the cam, I’ve decided that I’ll be breaking the ice with some photos first. ;)

Every now and then it happens that window manager of your desktop will crash and die in a horrible pain, leaving you with a desktop that is still there but you can’t interact with any of the windows on it. This feels like a one-way street and you’re already reaching for that reset button. Halt! Don’t move a muscle.

Do you have any other computers in your house? No? Are you running Ubuntu 8.x or older? Yes? Good. Switch to text-mode console. CTRL-ALT-F1, log yourself in and just type:

$ fortune
$ compiz &
$ fortune
$ exit

If this fails you can always press CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE and kill your Xorg. Gdm will restart them and you’ll be able to login again. Losing all your unsaved work.

Are you using Ubuntu 9.04 and later? You’re stuck! CTRL-ALT-F1 will not work, CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE fails too. Do you have a smartphone? Great! See attached picture and see how I fixed my problem and half-failed.

Restarting GDM

Why half fail? Always, always ask yourself, what is the minimal task that you have to do, to accomplish something.

With me it was restarting the compiz window manager, not restarting Xorg server. :)