It doesn't matter much what Linux you use. Rather what is your desktop environment? (KDE Plasma, Gnome, sway etc.)
On KDE for example there is a shortcut to restart the compositor, which might fix your issue.
But in general you might have luck "restarting" it by switching the tty. You do that by pressing CTRL + ALT + some function key between F1 and F8 (the standard gui tty number depends on the distro). Try to switch to a non gui tty and then back.
For example, on my distro I would do:
CTRL + ALT + F1
CTRL + ALT + F2
but on yours it might be F7 or some other.
+1 to ctrl-alt-fsomething (start at f1 and go up to move through the different virtual terminals). once in a while there are graphics problems which this will fix.
If you're using GNOME Shell on X you can reload the shell (and all of its extensions) with alt-f2 and then in the "Run a command" dialog that appears type r and hit enter. Unfortunately this doesn't work in GNOME on Wayland.
Thanks Zorin OS uses GNOME with Wayland
I agree with Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2 but would add
init 3
init 5
but I learned for my case its better to reboot if my GPU is acting up the instability would eventually come back
the init command probably only works in Debian nowadays givin it's a thing from the sysvinit era
While these can help on other issues, these will do nothing if the driver has an unrecoverable issue.
If the kernel runs into a oops it can recover and you won't notice anything except a nasty looking error in dmesg. If it runs into a panic you need to hard reboot the system as it can't continue to run.
And the driver is stuffed if the hardware decides to have an unrecoverable issue.
(I'm looking at you, Intel GuC. You dumb little bastard.)
It doesn't matter much what Linux you use. Rather what is your desktop environment? (KDE Plasma, Gnome, sway etc.)
On KDE for example there is a shortcut to restart the compositor, which might fix your issue.
But in general you might have luck "restarting" it by switching the tty. You do that by pressing CTRL + ALT + some function key between F1 and F8 (the standard gui tty number depends on the distro). Try to switch to a non gui tty and then back.
For example, on my distro I would do:
but on yours it might be F7 or some other.
+1 to ctrl-alt-fsomething (start at f1 and go up to move through the different virtual terminals). once in a while there are graphics problems which this will fix.
If you're using GNOME Shell on X you can reload the shell (and all of its extensions) with alt-f2 and then in the "Run a command" dialog that appears type
rand hit enter. Unfortunately this doesn't work in GNOME on Wayland.Thanks Zorin OS uses GNOME with Wayland
I agree with Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2 but would add
init 3 init 5
but I learned for my case its better to reboot if my GPU is acting up the instability would eventually come back
the init command probably only works in Debian nowadays givin it's a thing from the sysvinit era
While these can help on other issues, these will do nothing if the driver has an unrecoverable issue.
If the kernel runs into a oops it can recover and you won't notice anything except a nasty looking error in dmesg. If it runs into a panic you need to hard reboot the system as it can't continue to run.
And the driver is stuffed if the hardware decides to have an unrecoverable issue.
(I'm looking at you, Intel GuC. You dumb little bastard.)