I have SEEN the light: keyboard shortcuts

[blnchflr]

Reposted from my journal, because I can't get over how helpful this is. It has been very slightly edited for the more linux-savvy audience here, but I probably still over-explain things :o)

I'm not talking about using keyboard shortcuts to copy/paste, print, rename folders/files, and all that. I'm talking about using keyboard shortcuts to open often-used folders and files. Why didn't anyone tell me about this? It's only the most brilliant thing EVER!!

Like, most of this post was composed in a specific plain-text document, which I can open from anywhere by hitting Alt+P. The minute I think of something I'd like to post on, I don't have to go online and find my draft post at DW, or open some program. I can just hit Alt+P, type out my thoughts, hit Ctrl+S to save and Alt+F4 to close. My fingers never have to leave the keyboard!

It can also be used for sneaksy things, like hiding folders you don't want people to trip over (like e.g. I hide my fandom folder). But in the olden days, hiding folders also meant more time spent finding them, yourself. Now I can open my fandom folder by the mere hitting of two keyboard keys. Have I mentioned how brilliant this is??

( Ubuntu how-to, can doubtlessly be tailored to work in your OS )

Mysterious slowness

[zvi]

I upgraded to Ubuntu Karmic Koala, and all seemed to be okay for a while, and then I upgraded fifteen packages which were not upgraded, without first taking careful note of which packages those were. (Yes, I know, this isn't particularly clever, but it's always worked in the past.)

In any case, my desktop is now slow to the point of unusability. (I have some panel applets, tomboy, tasque, ubuntu one and dropbox going) but I can only open one cpu-intensive application at a time now, and it is painful to use; i.e. Firefox or Totem, pick one, and don't expect to get anything like work done.

When I look at top, I don't see any processes using lots of CPU cycles or memory except Xorg. (I don't know if Xorg normally uses lots of cpu/memory; I almost always run top as top -u, I only started running it for the whole system when the system started slowing down.)

Does anyone know of a good reference to explain what I'm seeing with top, or know of another way to find out why my computer is so slow, or have any suggestions generally?

Worst to worst, I can backup the home drive to my external hard drive and do a clean re-install, but I'd rather not.