These may or may not be common knowledge, but my top and bottom panels in Xubuntu disappeared on me and my contextual menu for the desktop didn’t work either. All of the open applications ran fine. I figured I would have to restart, since logging out wasn’t an option. However, I started poking around with some Control-Alt combinations and was delighted to find a few really important commands:
- Control-Alt-Delete: Locks the screen, maybe turns on screen saver. (mine’s set to ‘blank’)
- Control-Alt-Backspace: Log out of current user.
- Control-Alt-Escape: Force Quit via your cursor turning into ‘Skull and Crossbones’. Left-Click on a window to force quit any application. Right-Click to cancel.
P.S. I didn’t have to restart after all.