Why does CTRL-ALT-F1 not send me to a terminal?

Question

I'd like to go to a terminal so I can kill processes jamming my windowing session. (I would then return with CTRL-ALT-F7.) But CTRL-ALT-F1 just locks the screen; no terminal.

CTRL-ALT-Fn-F1 similarly does not work.

What am I doing wrong? How do I get the effect of CTRL-ALT-F1?

(This is a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming with Ubuntu 18.04)

tty's showing a login depends on the graphics card driver. Switch to another driver and try again. — Rinzwind, Jun 19 '19 at 09:55
@graham I am doing this when my windwoing session jams up. I need some sort of override key that has higher priority than the processes using 100% of CPU or memory. — Joshua Fox, Jun 19 '19 at 09:59
"Switch to another driver"

I have an Nvidia card that produces horrible problems with the wrong driver. — Joshua Fox, Jun 19 '19 at 10:00
Thank you. This one was useful https://askubuntu.com/questions/1033206 — Joshua Fox, Jun 19 '19 at 12:51

Joshua Fox · Accepted Answer · 2022-08-03T14:44:58.520

14

CTRL-ALT-F3 to get to terminal; ALT-F2 to return to GUI. (See this answer.) I have not yet verified if this has a higher priority that would override a stuck windowing system, thus allowing me to get to a terminal, then kill the problematic process, comparable to Windows CTRL-ALT-DEL.

edited Aug 03 '22 at 14:44

answered Jun 19 '19 at 12:50

Joshua Fox

2,941

1

Nah, none of the F1-F12 works. – June Wang Aug 01 '20 at 07:17
Appparently ctrl+alt+del works to reboot, but ctrl+alt+f1 doesn't send me to a tty1. And my gdm session crashed (somehow) so I don't know what's going on. – isaaclw Aug 04 '20 at 13:06
@isaaclw Note that the answer says to use Ctrl+Alt+F3, not Ctrl+Alt+F1. – Chai T. Rex Dec 16 '22 at 06:37

Why does CTRL-ALT-F1 not send me to a terminal?

1 Answers1