Is there some Linux equivalent to "ctrl + alt + del?" I get that killing a process from the terminal is preferred, but one of the few things I like about windows is if the GUI freezes up, I can pretty much always kill the process by pressing ctrl+alt+del and finding it in task manager. Using Linux if I don't already have the terminal open there are plenty of times I'm just force restarting the computer because I don't know what else to do.
Ctrl+alt+F1/F2/F3 etc.
It lets you switch to another terminal session, where you can use something like top/htop for a commandline equivalent to task manager.
That's what I don't get about what they said above. If the Windows desktop freezes up, Task Manager won't open either (happened to me quite some times over the years - less so since they moved to the NT kernel though). What you mentioned always works short of kernel panic.
It definitely creeps up every once in a while on my Windows computer. It's really not a common occurrence and only happens when I'm doing something that's not recommended.
Do you have enough swap allocated to your linux machine? I found that my GUI froze frequently due to not having enough of it when the computer was under heavy load.