# The Ubuntu Forum Community > Ubuntu Official Flavours Support > New to Ubuntu > [ubuntu] show all running processes

## irish66

Hi. is there a keyboard shortcut to show list of all running processess. ie what ctrl alt delete does in windows xp.
M

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## handydan918

> Hi. is there a keyboard shortcut to show list of all running processess. ie what ctrl alt delete does in windows xp.
> M


In a terminal window, you can enter 

```
top
```

 or 

```
ps aux
```

Just idle curiosity, or is there a reason for your query?

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## bswilson

> Hi. is there a keyboard shortcut to show list of all running processess. ie what ctrl alt delete does in windows xp.
> M


See the other replies about *top* and *ps*, but I believe you could assign a keyboard combination to launch the System Monitor application, which is somewhat similar to the Windows Task Manager.

Here are two good articles (1,2) on how to do that.

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## irish66

Wow. talk about quick responses. Yep, it was related to ldc++ running. but not showing on screen. I wanted to use an "end task" option.
Those commands you gave me seem to be to show running processess in text form. I guess what i really want is to be able to stop a program running. 
M

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## binbash

ps aux | grep programname
kill pidnumber

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## irish66

Thanks everybody
so bin, if i wanted to kill firefox, would it be
ps aux | grep firefox
kill pidnumber

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## binbash

> Thanks everybody
> so bin, if i wanted to kill firefox, would it be
> ps aux | grep firefox
> kill pidnumber


Sample : 

xxxx@ubuntu:~/compiz/stackswitch$ ps aux | grep firefox
xxxx     18215 11.5  5.2 277244 108540 ?       Sl   03:20   2:38 /usr/lib/firefox-3.1b2pre/firefox-3.1

kill 18215 or sudo kill 18215

you may need sudo at some programs

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## irish66

Thank you. That seems like a lot of writing though.
M

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## irish66

actually system moniter is fine. Thank you.Mr wilson.
M

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## bswilson

> actually system moniter is fine. Thank you.Mr wilson.
> M


My pleasure!  We're here to help you as best we can.   :Smile:

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## uiberto

Thanks, those gconf-editor links did just the trick.

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## Kinetic Being

also you could use 



```
killall
```

instead of 



```
kill
```

to kill a program by its name instead of the processid.

Like this:



```
sudo killall firefox
```

would kill firefox.

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## gettinoriginal

CLI is fine, but why not just >System >Admin >Sytem Monitor >Processes >End Process ??

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## Kinetic Being

> CLI is fine, but why not just >System >Admin >Sytem Monitor >Processes >End Process ??



I agree.

Every fix anyone says is for the CLI, which is very new-user unfriendly.

I understand how its a lot easier to just give a command than guide someone through a GUI, which is why I did just give advice in commands...

but,

It scares people, makes them think that this is the only way to do things, and they think they need to know any of it. It doesn't matter if its faster, or easier (in a way), they don't know that, its just scary to them.

But really, it doesn't matter too much...If they want to learn it they will, if not they can just copy/paste and be done with it...

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## irish66

Ta, Kb. I might ty that kill command sometime.
M

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