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0e1f616
(Get the code!)
I think the proposed blueprint is a really bad idea, and the reasons given by the originator are especially ridiculous. I've copied the arguments below, with my comments.
- There is no need for such a feature for an end user desktop system (you cannot kill the X server in MacOSX...)
Is there a need for a Windows machine to have ctrl-alt-del to get out of a bad situation? Of course that's rhetorical, but I believe that ctrl-alt-bksp is needed in all Linux variants for the same reason. And so what if OS X doesn't have it? Not everything in Ubuntu has to match OS X, does it?
- The typical end user does not know about this feature (it is undocumented and hidden) and it is relatively easy to trigger it by mistake. It can have disastrous consequences.
- If one really needs to kill the X server, he can go to a tty term and do it by hand.
Um, what typical end user is going to know about ctrl-alt-F[1-6], and be able to use that properly? It's not necessarily hidden like c-a-bksp is, but the average end-user is going to freak out if (s)he has to do anything in a terminal. C-a-bksp kills the X server and restarts it, leaving the user at a login prompt. What could be simpler and more useful to the "typical end user"?
I'm not sure that enough thought was given to this idea from the perspective of the typical end user. "...go to a tty term and do it by hand" is too geeky for Grandma, and so is having to use some buried utility to enable a very useful feature. As soon as someone tells Granny to drop to the console, or worse, mention the words tty or term(inal), I bet you'll get your mouth washed out with soap! Come on, designers, you want the average user to be able to use Ubuntu, but then you want to turn off a very useful feature because of uber-geeky thought processes?