Lack of ctrl-alt-backspace in Ubuntu 9.04 is ... inconvenient but fixable

I had heard that using ctrl-alt-backspace to kill the X server in Ubuntu was disabled in version 9.04 of the Linux distribution.

And I can confirm it. Painfully.

Something I did in Firefox 3.0.x caused X to crash. My cursor would move, but the keyboard was dead. I couldn't switch workspaces, nor could I restart X with ctrl-alt-backspace, as is the custom in almost all Unix/Linux operating systems that use the Xorg system for their GUI.

So what is replacing it? I'd sure like to know. Can you restore ctrl-alt-backspace functionality? Yes (details below).

I like the fact that ctrl-alt-delete presents the user with the normal shutdown menu, at which time a decision can be made about whether or not the system should really be shut down or not.

Perhaps my non-responsive keyboard meant that ctrl-alt-backspace wouldn't have worked even it that keystroke combination was implemented. In that case, it's a wash.

As it was, I pressed my laptop's power button (this is the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101, in case you were wondering), got the shutdown menu and proceeded to do an orderly shutdown of the machine.

So there was no fscking or journal recovery involved when I restarted the system. That's good.

The removal of ctrl-alt-backspace as a way of killing X was supposedly done so as to not confuse new users. I guess if X never crashes, that lack of confusion will help, but otherwise not so much.

Here are two ways to bring back ctrl-alt-backspace restarting of the X server: one with an added package, the other with a modification to xorg.conf.