Many of these shortcuts are similar to Windows however some are slightly different or add extra features to help speed up your day-to-day tasks.
1. [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Backspace] = kill X. Kills your current X session and returns you to the login screen. Use this if the normal exit procedure does not work.
2. [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Delete] = shutdown and reboot. Shuts down your current session and reboots the OS. Use only when the normal shutdown procedure does not work.
3. [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.
4. [Alt] + [Tab] = switch tasks. If you have more than one application open at a time, you can use [Alt] + [Tab] to switch among open tasks and applications.
5. [Ctrl] + [a] = move cursor to the beginning of a line. This works in most text editors and in the URL field in Mozilla.
6. [Ctrl] + [d] = logout of a terminal or console instead of having to type exit or logout.
7. [Ctrl] + [e] = move cursor to end of a line. This works in most text editors and in the URL field in Mozilla.
8. [Ctrl] + [l] = clear the terminal. This shortcut does the same thing as typing clear at a command line.
9. [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.
10. [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.
11. [Tab] = command autocomplete. Use this command when working in a terminal. Type the first few characters of a command and then press the [Tab] key. It will automatically complete the command or show all the commands that match the characters you typed.
12. [Up] and [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].
This month sees the Xbox taking over the GameCube in sales, Xboxes sales jumped by 42% to 10,371 in the past week according to sales analysts Chart Track. It means Microsoft's gaming system has taken a small lead over the Nintendo?s, with 233,503 XBoxes sold in the Britain compared to 230,876 GameCubes.
However Sony?s Playstation 2 still remains the market leader with almost 3million sales in the UK. The Playstation 2 is now the oldest console out of the 3 best sellers but is still continuing to sell more then its rivals. While the Xbox and GameCube only have a few best selling games such as Halo and Mario the Playstation 2 has had lots of best selling games including the best game of last year, Grand Theft Auto 3 and its follow up GTA ? Vice City that was launched last week.
The game GTA ? Vice City has already sold out in many shops for the PS2 but has caused a lot of controversy because of its gangster like content and excessive killing sprees ? a must have game basically. Vice City builds on the features of its predecessor with such items as motorbikes and helicopters. The game also features the sound tracks from over 10 well-known artists and is set to take best game of the year again. Australia has already told take 2, the producers of Vice City to remove scenes with prostitutes from the game in order to comply with their rules.
The search engine AltaVista this week relaunched its site with a new more simple and easy to use interface that is trying to help bring back visitors it has lost in recent years. Millions of visitors have left AltaVista to use its rivals sites that include Google and Yahoo. AltaVista have seen a 62% fall in visitors from 16million to 6 million in the last few years but the company is hopeful that the site can attract many of its past visitors back to the site with its new look and enhanced features. We tried the new AltaVista against Google to try to find key parts of the ImAFish site. ImAFish gets many hits from Google mainly looking for Xbot mainly. I first searched for ImAFish on both engines, Google came up with about 5 pages worth of links to a number of ImAFish's page and sites that mention ImAFish.
When I searched AltaVista I only found 3 results for ImAFish, 2 being the homepage and another being another site with reference to ImAFish. I searched for a number of other features from ImAFish on Google and AltaVista including Xbot and Comedy, both times Google came up with more results but Altavista did come up with the correct results for ImAFish it even gave the handy tool of translating ImAFish into other languages.
Though the new AltaVista looks a lot more up to date and is even more easier to use its still not as powerful search wise then it is compared to Google. Some people do like not having as many search results as it takes them less time to search them but most do prefer to have a number of options to look through until your get the results that you want. I think AltaVista still has as way to go before it can become better then its rivals and take back the visitors it has lost over the past few years.