Disabling ctrl-alt-backspace and other annoying key sequences

Ctrl-alt-backspace is supposed to kill the X server. This can be annoying, especially when the display is supposed to be locked :-)

Ctrl-alt-f1 is supposed to switch to virtual terminal 1. There is no real reason one would ever want to do this when using an X server.

To disable those bindings, modify the "ServerFlags" section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf as follows:

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option  "DontZap"  "true"
    Option "DontVTSwitch"  "true"
    # ...
EndSection

Taking a screenshot

To take a screenshot, use import from ImageMagick. The program takes the name of the output file as argument. To take a snapshot in ten seconds, run:

$ sleep 10 && import myscreen.png

then drag the mouse over the region of the screen you want in the screenshot.

Those instructions come from this linux screenshot howto

Xscreensaver configuration

xscreensaver is the "standard" Linux screensaving utility. This is how I configured it on my laptop.

I had to add something like xscreensaver & in my .xinitrc so that it is launched with the X server. To configure it, just run xscreensaver-demo . To do some special action, use xscreensaver-command, e.g xscreensaver-command -lock locks the screen.

X over SSH with Xnest

Assume you want to run GNOME remotely, but you want to continue working on your window manager at the same time. The solution is to run it in a separate window using Xnest. To do that, first start Xnest on display :1:

$ Xnest -ac -geometry 1024x550 :1

Then set your display, ssh to the remote host and launch gnome:

$ DISPLAY=:1 ssh -X luser@example.com gnome-session