Tab: One of the most used keys. Pressing the 'tab' key while typing the path to any directory or a filename is very helpful. Write the first few characters of the file or directory and press the tab key to complete the name or give you a list of possibilities. When pressed during an incomplete command, the 'tab' key completes the command for you.

Ctrl+Alt+Del: When used at the console it reboots the machine. Remember it causes a soft boot and not a cold boot. The system will shutdown all services before rebooting.

UP Arrow: In the terminal, it cycles through the list of commands that you have executed.

GPM: Let's look at copying data from one virtual terminal to another. This requires your mouse to be setup for GPM. Use mouseconfig under Red Hat and Yast under SuSE to set up your mouse correctly. Also make sure the package GPM is installed beforehand.

MiddleMouseButton: Just select the text you would want to copy using your mouse. Do as you would under Windows. Press and hold the right mouse button and then drag to select the text. Then switch to the terminal you want to copy to and click the middle mouse button. This will paste the text at the current cursor location.

~: This represents your home directory. Use this in a command and the `~` will get replaced by your home directory. cd ~/freeos . This command gets you to the 'freeos' directory, which is a sub-directory under your home directory.

Setting the speed of your mouse in X: Do a "man xset" and look at the option 'm'.

'Very Fast' xset m 7 10

'Normal(Fast)" xset m 3 10

"System Default" xset m default

"Glacial" xset m 0 10

The xset -m option takes two parameters: the first is the speed and the second is the threshold value. But these values will be reset as soon as you log out. To make this setting permanent, just add it to the ".xsession" file in your home directory.

Ctrl+Right-Mouse-button: Setting your Font Size in xterm. To set your font size in an Xterm you can make use of the command 'setfont' or simply just do the following. If you are in an xterm use 'ctrl + right mouse button. This will popup a menu where you can choose some (standard) font-sizes.

How to kill Netscape but have it save your bookmarks and history:

'kill -12" (USR2) is more gracious, when used to terminate Netscape. Netscape will save the bookmarks and history files of the current session.

Disable Blanking in Text consoles: