The GNOME desktop environment is the default for Debian (and one of it’s more popular distros, Ubuntu), and is one that I use every day. One thing that I always have a hard time remembering is how to setup global keyboard shortcuts, so this quick guide will document the process.

There is a simple applet (reached via the menu “System | Preferences | Keyboard Shortcuts”) which allows you to specify which keys should be used for common activities.

Using the applet you can, for example, setup the keybinding Ctrl-Alt-t to run a terminal. However the list of actions is static, and it isn’t possible to add a new command there.

If you wish to bind Ctrl-Alt-e to launching emacs you’re out of luck - to do this you must use the gconf-editor.

Launch the editor by opening a terminal and running:

skx@pies:~$ gconf-editor

Using the gconf-editor we will need to do two things:

• Define a new command.
• Define the shortcut which should be used to execute that command.

So first of all navigate to “apps | metacity | keybinding_commands“. Once there in the righthand pane select “command_1″ and change the value to /usr/bin/emacs.

Now we need to define the shortcut which will execute it, we do that by visiting the key “apps | metacity | global_keybindings“. Choose “run_command_1″ and set the value to be “<Control><Alt>e”.

Now you should find that pressing Ctrl+Alt+e will launch emacs.

I hope in the future the keyboard shortcut application will allow you to define arbitrary commands and their associated shortcuts.