A few keyboard short-cuts to use working in Linux terminal either in a text mode or desktop X session:
- [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Fn] = it switches screens.
[Ctrl]+[Alt] + [F1] through [F6] are text-mode shell prompt screens and [F7] is the graphical desktop screen. - [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Delete] = When is used in graphic desktop session it shuts down Cent OS, Red Hat and should work similar with any other Linux distribution. To use only when the normal shutdown procedure does not work, this short-cut will display the desktop logout screen that allow you to logout, reboot, or shut down.
- [Middle Mouse Button] = pastes highlighted text. Use the left mouse button to highlight the text. Point the cursor to the spot where you want it pasted. Click the middle mouse button to paste it. In a system with a two-button mouse, if you configured your mouse to emulate a third mouse button, you can click both the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously to perform a paste.
- [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Backspace] = kill a current X session. It will kill your graphical desktop session and return to the login screen. To use if the normal close procedure does not work.
- [Alt] + [Tab] = in the graphical environment has the same behaviour like in Windows it switches between windows
- [Ctrl] + [a] = moves cursor to the beginning of a line
- [Ctrl] + [e] = it will move cursor to end of a line
- [Ctrl] + [l] = clears the terminal equal to typing clear at a command line.
- [Ctrl] + [u] = delete characters from the cursor to the beginning of the line
- [Ctrl] + [d] = it will log you out of close shell prompt. The same behaviour like using commands: logout or exit.
- [Tab] = it auto completes the commands used in a command line. Double [Tab] displays all possible commands beginning with entered characters
- [Up] and [Down] Arrow = previous and a next command in history. When using a shell prompt, press the [up] or [down] arrow to scroll through a history of commands you have typed from the current directory.
- [Ctrl] +[ R] – searches a phrase through the commands history.
When it is pressed the prompt will changed into: (reverse- i -search)’your_searched_phrase ‘: then input a couple characters of the previous command NEW