Besides what was already mentioned, I also use those tricks:
If by any chance the unresponsive program was started in a terminal, I would try a Ctrl+D or Ctrl+C. If nothing happens I'd try a Ctrl+Z followed by a ruthless
kill.If I knew the responsible program, I would open a terminal and use
killall. (E.g.,killall firefox)Alternatively, under Gnome, I would launch run command and invoke
xkill, which allows you to kill a program by simply clicking on a window it owns.Finally, just in case my keyboard melts, I have a System Monitor applet (also under Gnome) which will pop up the gnome-system-monitor when clicked. From there, I can kill any process I own using only my mouse.
