Stefaan Lippens' webface

With the shortcut alt+F2 in KDE you invoke the "run command" dialog (also accessible from the start menu if it's not hidden of course). It is a fast and easy way to launch an application if you know its command line name (which is mostly the same as its normal name, except for things like OpenOffice.org).

If you work in a Linux desktop environment/windows manager like KDE, Gnome, IceWM (and probably many others), you definitly should try the following mouse trick: click/drag while holding <alt> above a (not maximized) application window. Depending on the mouse button and the windows manager this should move or resize the window. It's way easier than aiming at those thin window headers and borders.

For example in KDE and IceWM you can do the following:

• holding <alt> + left mouse button drag: move the window

When you want get rid of some files, but fully deleting them is bit drastic, a trash can is an handy option. In a graphical environment the tools are there to do it (drag and drop, right mouse button on a file, etc.), but on the command line it is not something very handy to do. In the old days there was a directory ~/Desktop/Trash that acted as the trash can. But nowadays, KDE and Gnome implement the freedesktop.org trash specification, which is more advanced than a simple directory with files.

While I'm a KDE user, I still use some Gnome appliciations or other applications with a GTK interface (the gimp, synaptic, firefox and thunderbird for example). Their default skin when running under KDE (on my Kubuntu Linux system) was a bit ugly in my humble opinion, not to say it felt like motif uglyness.