How do I reset a crashed GUI?

[taltamir]

My GUI crashed and I want to reset it.
I don't have a taskbar, programs still run fine but their windows are missing the top bar with the minimize/maximize/close buttons

In windows I would do ctrl-alt-del to bring up task manager and then kill and restart explorer.exe
or possibly logout-login.

How do I do something equivalent in mint?

[Cosmo.]

This depends from your unknown desktop environment. Without that info no answer is possible.

[half-word]

This actually is a technical question.

It's obvious the window manager crashed here. There are several ways to escape from that state, but I believe the fastest and easiest one for you is to switch to a virtual console and reboot your system. Just press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and you'll get to the black console screen with the "login" prompt. Then hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and the computer will proceed with the reboot sequence.

If the same problem happens again, report back here and you'll no doubt get help with troubleshooting it.

[taltamir]

This depends from your unknown desktop environment. Without that info no answer is possible.

Cinnamon.
The flagship desktop environment of linux mint. so I figured it would be obvious, I guess I should have specified.

[taltamir]

This actually is a technical question.

It's obvious the window manager crashed here. There are several ways to escape from that state, but I believe the fastest and easiest one for you is to switch to a virtual console and reboot your system. Just press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and you'll get to the black console screen with the "login" prompt. Then hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and the computer will proceed with the reboot sequence.

If the same problem happens again, report back here and you'll no doubt get help with troubleshooting it.

Thank you. I managed to find the ctrl-alt-F1 answer online.. and it did not work.
However, ctrl-alt-backspace DID work. it signed me out and then I was able to sign back in and everything worked afterwards.

[half-word]

It's great that you managed to escape without forcing the computer to power off. It's strange that Ctrl-Alt-Backspace worked as it's disabled by default in modern Xorg installs; I guess everything went out of whack good. It's even stranger if switching to a virtual console didn't work.

[SMG]

It's strange that Ctrl-Alt-Backspace worked as it's disabled by default in modern Xorg installs

It's enabled in current versions of Linux Mint to restart the X Server.

However, it does seem odd it fixed this issue.

[antikythera]

The combo for Cinnamon is CTRL+ALT+ESC

[Cosmo.]

This depends from your unknown desktop environment. Without that info no answer is possible.

Cinnamon.
The flagship desktop environment of linux mint. so I figured it would be obvious

No information is obvious, which is not provided. The only obvious thing in this context is, that Mint provides 3 desktops.

For your question, the way antikythera gave you is the way to go to restart Cinnamon.

[taltamir]

The combo for Cinnamon is CTRL+ALT+ESC

Thank you

[half-word]

It's enabled in current versions of Linux Mint to restart the X Server.

This is interesting; I thought nobody enabled this by default anymore. Thanks for the info!