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How can I restart my GUI (X window server) from command line without rebooting the system? Which process(es) do I need to kill and do they automatically restart?

4 Answers 4

7

All you need to do is restart LightDM as root, like so:

sudo restart lightdm
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  • 1
    You should probably mention that you should do this from a TTY (virtual terminal).
    – RolandiXor
    Commented Sep 16, 2016 at 17:19
  • I was guessing from the level of detail of the question that Mr. Wolf knows his way around the terminal. :)
    – Fred Rocha
    Commented Sep 16, 2016 at 18:15
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    I wasn't just referring to the "terminal", but oh well. (I said virtual for a reason. I mean the thing you get when you press ctrl+alt+f-key-of-your-choice).
    – RolandiXor
    Commented Sep 17, 2016 at 22:30
  • Oh, I see. And what would the advantage be in this case? How would that work? Curious myself now. :)
    – Fred Rocha
    Commented Sep 18, 2016 at 12:35
  • 2024 : restart: command not found
    – JRichardsz
    Commented Jun 2 at 14:06
9

This worked for me:

sudo service lightdm restart
2

The worst is that noone mentioned that you must use alt+ctrl+F1 to F6 to switch to terminal. Login there as standard user. Restart x with sudo command and then press alt+ctrl+F7 to go back to GUI.

1

On Ubuntu 18.04, I do this executing next command:

sudo systemctl restart lightdm

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