We seem to have two different scenarios and I am curious as to why. I went the
upgrade route rather than the fresh installation route and I have dontzap
installed by default and did the dontzap --disable command and I can
ctrl-alt-backspace to shutdown X.. I've tried it and it works.

When I said restart X, I meant log out and back in which ends one X session and
starts an new one. The xorg.conf file is the Linux equivalent of the Windows
registry. Important settings for graphics, mouse, etc are stored there. It is
just a text file.

The section to add was:

Section ServerFlags
Option DontZap false
EndSection

The spacing is single space after section, option and between "DontZap" and
"false"
EndSection is all one word as is "ServerFlags"

I have not tried this but you can if you want. Apparently
ALT GR (this is the RIGHT ALT key) + SYSRQ (Shares PrintScreen on my keyboard) +
K
will have the same effect as Ctrl-Alt-backspace