One of the most overlooked advantage in KDE is using shortcuts to launch programs that may otherwise take a few mouse clicks to do. Although the point and click is an ideal way in our wonderful world of plasmoids and widgets, nothing beats the shortcuts in both speed and convenience. And I am not referring to those icons neatly lined up on the desktop and linked to your applications. I'm referring to keyboard combinations, such as the likes of Ctrl+c or Alt+F2.
It is simple and it is effective. The only thing you need to concern yourself with is the conflict on assigning the key combinations. You will be warned if you type in a combination that is already in use.
Open KDE's SystemSettings and expand Common Appearance and Behavior. Click the arrow before Shortcuts and Gestures to expand the tree branch then select Custom Shortcuts.
Note that there are already a few entries. At the bottom of the middle window panel is Edit. Click it and select New Group. What you're doing is you are organzing and putting together your personal shortcuts. Give it a meaningful name, like My Shortcuts.
You will now have a new entry on the list called My Shorcuts and it is disabled. Click Edit again and select New > Global Shortcut > Command/URL.
You will get a blank item and for the pupose of remembering which application you are assigning a shortcut, type in the application's name. For this example we will use the PCLinuxOS Control Center, or just type in PCC. If it is not yet enabled, click to check the shortcut.
Next, on the right-hand side window panel are the Comment, Trigger and Action tabs. On the Comment tab, type in Launch PCLinuxOS Control Center. Then click the Trigger tab. You will notice in the following order that there is Shortcut:, a button with wrench icon followed by None, and another button for Clear/Cancel. Click the button with the wrench, and None changed to Input. Press the Meta key (Win) and while still pressing it, combine the Alt and p. Release the three keys and the display should read Meta+Alt+P.
Click the Action tab, and type in the command drakconf. Finally, click Apply. Try it out. Press Meta and Alt+p on your keyboard.
Add more keuboard shortcuts to your favorite applications to launch them with two or three combined keypress.
Note that these shortcuts will also appear in Common Appearance and Behavior > Global Keyboard Shortcuts > (KDE Component) khotkeys.
The khotkey files is located at ~/.kde4/share/config/khotkeysrc and the Global Keyboard Shortcuts is located at ~/.kde4/share/config/kglobalsortcutsrc.
Enjoy.
