Effective keyboard usage in Linux

The Linux pro user community often gives a stress on doing things via the command line interface, often known as CLI. It is not just a trend but a productivity hack for people who live on Linux, all day long. Getting things done using the CLI is much more convenient, once you get used to it.

Apart from the CLI, various graphical user interfaces(GUI) too have keyboard shortcuts for most of the Linux applications. We shall now put our eyes down to some commonly used key combination to get a handful of the routine tasks accomplished without you having the need to chase your mouse!

The following set of key combination are known to work on a GNOME desktop environment, with a hope that most of it shall work on alternative desktop environments. I shall be glad to see some more entries added to the list through the comments section.

Before we start, one should remember the 4 basic keystrokes for a GNOME desktop:

Apart from them, we have a list of productive keystroke combination:

The slider is a quick & easy way to accomplish tasks which would otherwise involve long trails of the mighty mouse. You can use the following combination:

Another set of key combination include Alt and the Function keys. This combination helps manage the windows:

You may use Alt + Space to bring up the window bar menu to check out this list, just in case you forget them!

What we just saw was a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts for window management tasks. We shall now eye on the next subset of keystrokes, which involves program management tasks. The following commands are often known as Apple Lisa/IBM editing commands and most programs are known to have them. But remember, just as one size doesn’t fit all, there may be some discrepancies.

Some shortcuts for Firefox;