Besides what was already mentioned, I also use these tricks:
If by any chance the unresponsive program was started in a terminal, I try Ctrl+D or Ctrl+C. If nothing happens I try Ctrl+Z followed by a ruthless
kill.If I know the responsible program, I open a terminal and use
killall(e.g.killall firefox).Alternatively, under Gnome, I 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.
