Keyboard shortcuts For Linux

[MrChris-]

Shortcuts for Linux Window System.

Ctrl + Alt + +
Switch to the next resolution in the X Window System. This works if
you've configured more than one resolution for your X server. Note that
you must use the + in your numeric keypad.

Ctrl + Alt + -
Switch to the previous X resolution. Use the - in your numeric keypad.

MiddleMouseButton
Paste the highlighted text. You can highlight the text with your left mouse button (or with some other highlighting method, depending on the application), and then press the middle mouse button

to paste. This is the normal copy-paste way in the X Window System, but it may not work in some X applications.

If you have a two-button mouse, pressing both of the buttons at the
same time has the same effect as pressing the middle one. If it
doesn't, you must enable 3-mouse-button emulation.

This works also in text terminals if you enable the gpm service.

Ctrl + Alt + Backspace
Kill the X server. Use this if X crashes and you can't exit it normally. If you've configured

your X Window System to start automatically at bootup, this restarts the server and throws you back to the graphical login screen.

Ctrl + Alt + F7
Switch to the GUI. If you have X Window System running, it runs in the seventh virtual terminal by default. If X isn't running, this terminal is empty. Depending on your distro it may just be ALT + F7.

Ctrl + Alt + Fn
Switches screens.

Ctrl+Alt + one of the function keys
Displays a new screen. F1 through F6 are text (console) screens and F7 is a graphical screen.

Ctrl + Tab
Switch tasks. If you have more than one application.

[MrChris-]

Command line shortcuts

Tab
Autocomplete commands and file names. Type the first letter(s) of a command, directory or file name, press Tab and the rest is completed automatically! If there are more commands starting with the same letters, the shell completes as much as it can and beeps. If you then press Tab again, it shows you all the alternatives.

This shortcut is really helpful and saves a lot of typing! It even works at the lilo prompt and in some X applications.

ArrowUp
Scroll and edit the previously executed commands. To execute them, press Enter like you normally do.

ArrowDown
Scroll and edit the next commands.

Shift + PageUp
Scroll terminal output up.

Shift + PageDown
Scroll terminal output down.

Clear
The clear command clears all previously executed commands and their output from the current terminal.

Reset
If you mess up your terminal, use the reset command. For example, if you try to cat a binary file, the terminal starts showing weird characters. Note that you may not be able to see the command when you're typing it.

Ctrl + c
Kill the current process.

Ctrl + z
Send the current process to background. This is useful if you have a program running, and you need the terminal for awhile but don't want to exit the program completely. Then just send it to background with Ctrl +z, do whatever you want, and type the command fg to get the process back.

Ctrl + d
Log out from the current terminal. If you use this in a terminal emulator under X, this usually shuts down the terminal emulator after logging you out.

Ctrl + Alt + Del
Reboot the system. You can change this behavior by editing /etc/inittab if you want the system to shut down instead of rebooting.

Ctrl + a
Moves cursor to the beginning of a line. This works in most text editors and in the URL field in Mozilla.

Ctrl + d
Logout of a terminal or console instead of having to type exit or logout.

Ctrl + e
Move cursor to end of a line. This works in most text editors and in the URL field in Mozilla.

Ctrl + l
Clear the terminal. This shortcut does the same thing as typing "clear" at a command line.

Ctrl + u
Clear the current line. If you are working in a terminal, use this shortcut to clear the current line from the cursor all the way to the end of the line.

CTRL + K
Removes everything on the current line after the cursor.

Up/Down Arrow
Show command history. When working in a terminal, press the up or down arrow to scroll through a history of commands you have typed from the current directory. When you see the command you want to use, press Enter.

Clear
Clear the terminal. Type this at a command line to clear all displayed data from the terminal window.

Exit
Logout. Type this at a command line to logout of the current user or root account.

history
Show history of commands. Type this at a command line to see a numbered list of the previous 500

commands you typed. To display a shorter list of commands, by type history followed by a space and a number, for example, history 20.

Reset
Refresh terminal screen. Type this at a command line to refresh the terminal screen if characters are unclear.

Ctrl+Alt+F1
For a text screen logon

[sjs205]

Ctrl + z does not send a process to the background, it simply stops the process, effectively pausing it. If you want to have to process run in the background then y you to still use the terminal then press Ctrl + z followed by the following command:

$ bg

If you then want to bring the process back to the foreground, simply issue the following command:

$ fg