50 tips for Ubuntu Users
November 8, 2008 by Clair Ching
Filed under Geeky Fun
I found a gem of an article for Ubuntu users. I know there has been several of that already but still, I haven’t really read them much. In any case someone compiled them again, and now we have 50 tips. Ubuntu might seem easier to use with each release but you can still make it better. 
Some tips I think new users would benefit a lot from:
12. Use Workspaces more effectively
Use ‘Ctrl alt’ and either cursor left or right to switch between adjacent workspaces, and if you hold down the shift key, the active window will move to the new desktop too. For better control, right click on any windows top border to open a context menu, and from here you can choose to move the window to another workspace.14. Remember the running session
Another neat feature of the setting manager is that you can configure your desktop to remember the applications that were running when you shutdown your machine. This is a great way of quickly launching into your working environment. Just switch to the Session Options page and enable the ‘Automatically Remember’ option.17. Use pervasive searches
Ubuntu comes with an excellent utilities for searching through the contents of files and emails, but it’s not enabled by default. Open the Search and Indexing window from the Preferences menu, and enable both indexing and watching. After the index has been created, you can search through your files using the ‘Tracker Search Tool’ in the ‘Applications>Accessories’ menu.23. Launch OpenOffice.org faster
The default OpenOffice.org configuration errs on the side of caution. There are 100 levels of undo, for example, and reducing this number will reduce the amount of memory it uses. This setting can be found from the Options window by switching to the Memory page. Try reducing the undo steps to 30.28. Quickly restart the desktop
Occasionally, you may find that your desktop hangs and you can no longer use the keyboard or mouse. Fortunately, the desktop process is entirely independent of the rest of the operating system, and you can reset the desktop by holding down the Ctrl Alt and backspace keys. But you will still lose any unsaved data, so be careful.29. Jump to a console
Another option if your desktop has crashed is jumping to a command-line console. Pressing Ctrl and alt, followed by F1-F6 will switch the display to one of six different consoles. From here, you can login and try to kill the process causing trouble, before switching back to your desktop by pressing Ctrl Alt and F7.
These are actually some of the things I learned when I was just starting on using Ubuntu. Actually a lot of these tips are also useful for those using other distros. 
The article segregates the topic for us.
I’m not seeing the link to that article. Can you help me find it?
Nice!
Feels like a long time (1 year ago) since I started with Ubuntu and learned these things. No I am a full open source convert.
Wow…and here most of these are for the Gnome desktop…no Ubuntu required.
I guess you have to attract clickthroughs somehow right?
IMHO, what you’ve just done here is confuse linux users…now new linux users won’t even think that you can do any of this stuff outside of ubuntu at all. Instead of helping new users, I fear you’ve actually hindered them. Once they find out Ubuntu isn’t the best linux for them…they’ll be right back to square one thinking that these tips are for Ubuntu only.
But, like I said, ya gotta get clickthroughs somehow right?
Hmmmm….no url for the “50 Tips”?
50 tips? i count only six. is there a link provided, that i am missing?
@devnet Sorry if you think otherwise. And I didn’t really say that Ubuntu’s the best for new linux users ^^ My mistake is that I didn’t say that these stuff I pointed out are for Gnome. I am sorry if I didn’t do it that way. I try to write better but I fail from time to time.
The thing is: if someone doesn’t realize this stuff is valid outside Ubuntu, then is their fault only.
Nothing stops you from trying this same stuff in any other distribution.
While I agree that articles “about Ubuntu” that actually talk about some component you can have in any other distribution are annoying, I don’t think anybody will be as confused as devnet suggests.
Hey, if you are not able to even *try* to do it, then you are not a novice, you are an idiot. And I personally don’t think that someone who looks for information about how to improve his or her computer experience is an idiot.
Nice list! Although I would have liked to have a link to the other article and see the rest of the list (being a fairly new Linux user). I’m always looking for a good reference for these type of things.