Who never liked to just sit comfortably while having the keyboard on knees ?
The sing is when it happens you're likely to have an intensive keyboard use and it becomes limited with mouse. Then you probably want to operate your computer with keyboard which begins with being able to reach some "places" or "tools" in the operating system. Of course at the time of DOS it would especially not be a problem but with current GUI OSes, most of the time it is mainly though to be used with a mouse or other pointing device (stylus, finger, ...) but the guys who designed that did not forget those who would not use a mouse and actually, when you master that kind of shortcut it can raise you speed at using your OS or application.
These "tools" or "places" are most of the time your desktop and a menubar. I will therfore succinctly explain how to navigate through all these for OS and desktops I know : Windows and Linux under Gnome and Unity.
Windows
Windows has a very ergonomic way to navigate through. It is so obvious that I found how to do it by myself without even reading the manual when I was a teen. =D Obviously the Windows key is a great help but ther's another key to remember : Tab. Let say that you are on the desktop. Arrow keys allows you to select an icon. Everytime you'd press Tab, you to to the next "place" and you cycle between the Desktop, Start Menu, your opened programs and the system tray.
In Windows Explorer that's the same principle if you display the lateral panes.
Linux
Under Linux powered by Gnome and Unity this is not as simple unfortunately but it allows you to fine tune your short-cuts. I hope I won't mess up everything between defaults and my own ones I'm used to. If some short-cut would not work expect I gave you a customised one, sorry in advance for the inconvenience.
So let's start again from the desktop. Arrow keys obviously allows you to select an icon but tab won't allow you to cycle through the "places". There are specific short-cuts to know.
To access the equivalent to Start menu you have to use Alt+F1. Then the arrows allows you to browse the menu.
In Nautilus you have the same ergonomy as Windows Explorer with some specifics though.
Recap
To end this post I want to recap all that was said and more into the form of an equivalence table for the OSes and desktops (for Linux. I mean Unity, Gnome and maybe if completed KDE or others).
That's it for the moment. ;)
The sing is when it happens you're likely to have an intensive keyboard use and it becomes limited with mouse. Then you probably want to operate your computer with keyboard which begins with being able to reach some "places" or "tools" in the operating system. Of course at the time of DOS it would especially not be a problem but with current GUI OSes, most of the time it is mainly though to be used with a mouse or other pointing device (stylus, finger, ...) but the guys who designed that did not forget those who would not use a mouse and actually, when you master that kind of shortcut it can raise you speed at using your OS or application.
These "tools" or "places" are most of the time your desktop and a menubar. I will therfore succinctly explain how to navigate through all these for OS and desktops I know : Windows and Linux under Gnome and Unity.
Windows
Windows has a very ergonomic way to navigate through. It is so obvious that I found how to do it by myself without even reading the manual when I was a teen. =D Obviously the Windows key is a great help but ther's another key to remember : Tab. Let say that you are on the desktop. Arrow keys allows you to select an icon. Everytime you'd press Tab, you to to the next "place" and you cycle between the Desktop, Start Menu, your opened programs and the system tray.
In Windows Explorer that's the same principle if you display the lateral panes.
Linux
Under Linux powered by Gnome and Unity this is not as simple unfortunately but it allows you to fine tune your short-cuts. I hope I won't mess up everything between defaults and my own ones I'm used to. If some short-cut would not work expect I gave you a customised one, sorry in advance for the inconvenience.
So let's start again from the desktop. Arrow keys obviously allows you to select an icon but tab won't allow you to cycle through the "places". There are specific short-cuts to know.
To access the equivalent to Start menu you have to use Alt+F1. Then the arrows allows you to browse the menu.
In Nautilus you have the same ergonomy as Windows Explorer with some specifics though.
Recap
To end this post I want to recap all that was said and more into the form of an equivalence table for the OSes and desktops (for Linux. I mean Unity, Gnome and maybe if completed KDE or others).
| Action | Linux | Windows |
|---|---|---|
| Main menu | Win key | Winkey or Alt+F1 |
| Execute prompt | Win+R(un) | Alt+F2 |
| Cycle through active apps | Alt+Tab | Alt+Tab |
| Cycle through the opened windows of a specific app | Alt+F9 | |
| Select Consecutive Files | Maj | Maj |
| Select specific files | Ctrl | Ctrl |
| Navigate through panes | Tab | Tab |
| Go to location bar | Don't remember but it may be F6 | Ctrl+L(ocation) |