If you’re like most people, you probably use graphical applications to do things like manage your day-to-day tasks and keep track of important information. But if you’re not using the application regularly or if it’s not responding well, it might be time to force quit it. There are a few ways to force quit an unresponsive graphical application in Ubuntu:

  1. Type “sudo apt-get remove graphical-applications” and press enter. This will uninstall the offending application from your system.
  2. Type “sudo aptitude remove graphical-applications” and press enter. This will uninstall the offending application from your system but also add a new line to your system’s configuration file that says “not recommended”. If you don’t want this new line added, type “no” when asked to add it.
  3. Type “gsettings set org.ubuntu.desktopgraphicalquit true” and press enter. This will enable the graphical Quit button in the Ubuntu desktop environment and make quitting the application easier than before.

We’re not exaggerating about the amount of ways you can kill applications in Linux – we’ve covered three previously. However, this method has a few advantages: first, it’s incredibly easy – you just have to click a button and click on the frozen application. Second, in our testing, it’s been slightly more reliable in shutting down unresponsive GUI applications than other solutions like xkill. On the flip side, it won’t work at all for non-graphical programs.

Since this is a panel button, it will go on one of the panels on your Ubuntu environment. By default, you have two panels: one at the top, with shortcuts to applications, the clock, and other buttons; and one at the bottom, where open programs will be listed.

We’re going to add the Force Quit button to the bottom panel. Right click where you want to add it, and choose Add to Panel.

Scroll through the list and find Force Quit. Select it, and press the Add button.

Close the Add to Panel window and you’ll see the Force Quit button where you chose to add it.

Now, when you have an unresponsive application…

Click on the Force Quit panel button. You will see an explanatory message, and the cursor will change to a crosshair.

Click on the offending program, and you’ll be given a prompt to force it to quit.

Cross your fingers that you won’t lose much data! But at least you now have control over your Ubuntu machine again.