Restart X Server – Ubuntu Linux

While working on a Linux systems like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc., through a graphical user interface (GUI) it may happen that some application will hang the GUI and freeze a system.

To unfreeze the system without rebooting a machine we can restart an X server (also known as X11, or just X) that is the default GUI environment on most Linux distributions.

This note shows how to restart the X server from a command line and unfreeze the system.

Warning: Restart of the X server will close all applications in your current session.

Restart X Server

Press Ctrl + Alt + T to start a terminal window.

If the GUI hangs and the terminal window is not opening, you can get to the text-only console on TTY1 by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F1.

Execute the following command to restart the X server:

$ sudo pkill X

The command above will restart the X server and drop you to the GUI login screen.

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