In the next article we are going to take a look at how can we start the task manager with Ctrl + Alt + Del in Ubuntu. If you are used to starting the task manager by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del On a Windows PC, you might miss this key combination when you get to Ubuntu. In the following lines, we will see how to assign this key combination to start System Monitor.
By default, pressing the keys Ctrl + Alt + Del On Ubuntu system, a GNOME desktop environment logout dialog appears. If this is not what you want and, by pressing these keys you would like to see the Ubuntu System Monitor, then we will see how to get it.
System Monitor Features
- Show CPU and memory consumption of processes per core.
- Shows the available and used disk space.
- Control and monitor processes. We can eliminate an unwanted process.
- It will also provide us with a visualization of network usage.
Configure Ctrl + Alt + Del to start System Monitor in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
To start we will open the application «Configuration« from the Ubuntu applications menu.
In the window that is going to open, we are going to scroll down now click on the option "Key combinations".
We will scroll through the list looking for the option «Logout«, located under the System section.
Now we will have to reassign the option «Sign off" with a set of keys. For this example, I'm going to assign the key combination Ctrl + Alt + L. If we click on «Logout«, A window will appear asking us to add the new combination. Once the keys that interest us have been pressed, we will have to click on the button Establish to apply the changes.
This step is essential because each key combination cannot perform more than one action. So we have to change this default setting to «Logout«. With this we will achieve that the combination Ctrl + Alt + Del is available for use with another key combination.
Now let's start the Add a custom shortcut dialog box by clicking the "+", located at the bottom of the keybindings window.
The dialog box will appear. Add a custom shortcut and it will ask us for a name, command and a combination of keys. We will give the keyboard shortcut a name like “Task Manager", The command to execute which will be"gnome-system-monitor”And the key combination Ctrl + Alt + Del. Now we will click on the button Add, located in the upper right of the dialog box to complete the task.
This new keyboard shortcut will be displayed in the Custom combination.
At this point, if we press the keyboard combination Ctrl + Alt + Del the task manager will open in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
The window is divided into three tabs: processes, resources, and file systems.
The process section shows all processes that are currently running on your Ubuntu system. Process ID, memory, and CPU percentage are also displayed here. For kill a processAll you have to do is right click on it and select the option «kill«.
The resources tab displays CPU history, network history, swap history, and memory history.
The filesystems section displays the properties of the hard disk device, including total size, type, used space, and availability.
Remove keyboard shortcut
To remove the configured keyboard shortcut, we will only have to open the page again Configuration and navigate to the section Custom combination. If we select the name of the shortcut, a configuration window will open. In it, at the top we will find the remove button.
After all this, we can now use Ctrl + Alt + Del to start the task manager on our Ubuntu system. That can be very useful in situations where your system has frozen and we need to remove some apps forcibly.