Ubuntu – How to restart GNOME Shell, after it freezes or becomes unresponsive

freezegnomegnome-shell

Sometimes, my GNOME Shell freezes. I can see (hear) background processes working (playing music), but I can't do anything in GNOME. No Alt+F2 followed by R and Enter.

I can switch to console using: Ctrl+Alt+F1, login as the same user and execute:

gnome-shell --replace

and return back Ctrl+F7, but then, I get a strange behavior. For example I cannot edit network connections. I cannot logout as well. What is the proper way to restart the gnome-shell?

Best Answer

The easier way is just pressing Alt + F2, type r then Enter. This will work so long the shell is usable.

You can also send SIGQUIT to the gnome-shell process which will terminate only the shell:

killall -3 gnome-shell

Other methods use more destructive means, which close all the applications, this shouldn't.

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