That moment in 21st century, when random programs can still cause your whole system to freeze

You whole system or just the window manager?

You can kill window manager and restart it. I can even do this in Windows 10.

@Demolishun I like how you just assume it’s Windows 😄
But how can you kill the window manager if all input (mouse, keyboard) doesn’t do anything? Yes, this can happen.

@Lensflare I have not seen that in Windows 10. Generally only see it in games if it does, but it usually locks up so bad that sound card just chirps. I try not to let games run full screen unless its in borderless windowed mode. This keeps it from locking me out most of the time. Game usually just dies, but doesn't keep you in some misc graphics mode.

I was mentioning windows because it being the most likely to lock up so hard you couldn't do anything. Linux you can generally get to a console as X is just another process.

@Demolishun I use Linux at work and Windows at home. Doesn't matter much if system or wm freezes, both are annoying.

Windows wm can crash and restart even for simple stuff, like when nfs drive goes offline.

I've had more hard locks on linux recently tough.

I've had Linux completely lock up, to the point that it didn't respond to keyboard or mouse input at all. I had to force-shutdown and restart, no other option. I have had the same happen on Windows.

@Lensflare
Switch to Wayland. It has GUI-level separation, so a single application can't just swallow all the input or spy on your root shell xterm.

Windows (NT, 7, 10, 11) has GUI-level separation too by the way.
Just the good ole XOrg is architecturally broken beyond repair so hard - its major maintainers decided to make Wayland instead...