I was browsing round my Ubuntu system when I found something that would later come to save me quite a lot of time. A link in the preferences page called "Keyboard Shortcuts".

Assuming you're running Ubuntu, and are an admin user on your machine, you can quickly setup shortcuts to do some useful things.

To start off with launch the Keyboard shortcuts system: from the menu click on "System", then "Preferences" and finally "Keyboard Shortcuts"

You now have a long list, looking something like this:

On the left are the actions, the right the shortcut that launches the action. Just for the sake of argument, click on "Launch Web browser". Note, that the Shortcut column turns into "New accelerator". Now, type the key combination that you want to use. For the sake of argument, try pressing the "Shift" and "I" keys.

If you ever want to delete a shortcut, click on the shortcut you wish to delete, and hit the "Backspace" key (One with an arrow heading left).

Now, you can setup your shortcuts how you like them. If you get stuck, press the Help button. A good key to use, if the right and left start buttons, which can be assigned to different tasks in your system. You can make them open the panel menu, replacing the Alt+F1 shortcut. Or, you can do other things. Personally, I have my system configured to launch a Terminal window (Like a DOS prompt box on windows, just 100x more powerful) on my left start button, and a calculator on the right.

One last tip, if you ever try to assign a shortcut that has already been assigned to something else, the system will warn you with the following box:

I hope that this has been useful!