Megan — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:59:29 +0000

There are probably a lot of things I do normally without realizing it's a special shortcut. Like the ctrl-shift-arrow to select the next word. I took a word processing course one summer (because my mom made me because I didn't have a job) and learned a lot of those things. That was using Word Perfect before it had a GUI!

I like keyboard shortcuts a lot - I had some problems with my wrists several years ago and I learned that using the keyboard as much as possible distributes the strain across both arms and prevents strain.

I always like to customize my shortcuts as much as possible. Opera has a lot of great keyboard shortcuts and the ability to customize them however you want. I use that a lot. Same with any other program I use regularly. I really dislike programs that don't let me customize the keyboard shortcuts.

I haven't learned many of the shortcuts in Ubuntu yet - I'll have to find a reference to print out.

Abhishek Reddy — Sun, 06 May 2007 20:54:46 +0000

brady.k;218880 wrote: No, I'm serious. At least here in the US, no-one uses any layout OTHER than QWERTY. Maybe I'm stupid? But I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same things here...

Ah, it's hard to read irony in hypertext, thought I'd check.

Qwerty is dominant just about everywhere that English language keyboards are used. My keyboard physically has a qwerty layout too, so I've had to learn to type dvorak on it without looking (incidentally a good thing).

brady.k — Sun, 06 May 2007 18:09:38 +0000

No, I'm serious. At least here in the US, no-one uses any layout OTHER than QWERTY. Maybe I'm stupid? But I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same things here...

demonhale — Sun, 06 May 2007 11:02:17 +0000

My keyboard has extra web and media buttons, volume controls etc... but for keyboard tips and tricks, I always like to use keyboard shortcuts for Windows PC's, like the use of Ctrl+Shift+Esc instead of Ctrl+Alt+del to open the task manager, and the use of the Tab keys when filling in online forms as well as the Shift+Tab to go backwards... and the fastest shutdown keys which would be to use WindowsKey+D then Alt+F4+u.... or if you need it shorter WindowsKey+U...

Abhishek Reddy — Sun, 06 May 2007 10:04:06 +0000

brady.k;218846 wrote: Dvorak instead of QWERTY? That's ... that's ... freakin unheard of.

Are you being facetious?

brady.k — Sun, 06 May 2007 04:46:15 +0000

Dvorak instead of QWERTY? That's ... that's ... freakin unheard of.

Abhishek Reddy — Sun, 06 May 2007 04:17:37 +0000

I've customised just about everything in my GNU/Linux system, from the hardware level upwards.

My keyboard is a Happy Hacking Lite2, with Sun layout, meaning the Control key is in the right place and there is nothing absurd like a "Windows" key (only an extra option key ) to be found. The keyboard has switches to adjust a couple of minor settings too, and I've physically swapped keycaps to reflect that.

I've defaulted to the dvorak keymap using loadkeys, even in the console. Other than this, I'm hesitant to change keyboard settings in Linux, as I'd rather leave it to other programs at the user level.

My X uses dvorak, and I've created a handy .Xmodmap file to map shortcuts to greek symbols, superscript numbers and currency symbols. xkb is set to map meta and compose keys properly.

In KDE I've bound [incode]M-tab[/incode] to toggle my yakuake terminal, [incode]M-Esc[/incode] to focus fullscreen Emacs, [incode]M-,[/incode] and [incode]M-.[/incode] to cycle windows, and [incode]M-'[/incode] to minimise. KDE provides customisable application- and window-specific shortcuts, which is what allows me to focus a particular program's window.

Within applications like Emacs, Konqueror and yakuake, I've bound variations of [incode][CMS]-[,.][/incode] to cycle tabs or buffers. My Konqueror uses Emacs-like shortcuts, and has all sorts of hotkeys to focus widgets or load sites. KDE allows this with "multi-key shortcuts", so you can set [incode]C-x k[/incode], for instance, to kill a tab.

Recently my mouse failed, and I've started to rely entirely on the keyboard. Frankly, it's a lot nicer this way. I would be in no hurry to replace the mouse, were it not that a lot of websites are nearly impossible to use without a mouse. However, I'm kind of coping with this by controlling the pointer using the keyboard -- another feature of KDE's.

If someone else were to sit in my chair and use my computer as it is, I think they'd have a hard time getting even simple things done.

brady.k — Sat, 05 May 2007 22:54:55 +0000

In Soviet Russia, the keyboard tricks you.

Anyways...

On Linux you can customize your keyboard to do what you want. For example, you can set the Windows key to lock the screen, or turn off the computer. Almost anything you can think of can be set to work by keyboard combo.

I've customized the normal things that I use to keyboard commands (lock screen, change windows, change focus, access a menu, etc)

One of the coolest things you can do with a keyboard on Linux involves running Beryl (a fancy windows manager)... you hit ctrl+left-or-right arrow, and it switches desktops... but in CUBE form.

How cool is that!?!?