Now that you’ve installed Ubuntu, what can you do with your old Windows Start Menu key? Use it for the same thing of course!
Here’s a cool trick!
As you can see, Ubuntu has a drop down menu starting from the toolbar at the top of the screen, so… if your desktop used Gnome (which it probably does) let’s put that Windows Start key back to work.
To configure it do the following:
Go to System –> Preferences –> Keyboard Shortcuts
In the window that pops-up look for the entry that says “Show the panel menu” (See the image below where it is currently set to the default of “Alt+F1″. Click in that shortcut area (”Alt +F1″ and the words will change to “New accelerator”. Now just press the Windows key on your keyboard and click the close button.
VoilĂ ! You’re done. Now whenever you press your Windows key, your application menu will pop-up the same way in Ubuntu as it did in Windows.

This work by James House is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.


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I should add as well that you can configure other keyboard shortcuts as well. Just remember what the original settings were so that you can go back to those settings if you have any issues. (Write them down).