I wish to use my keyboard instead of my mouse

Ubuntu
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Greetings! I am installing a Supermicro H11DSi Dual EPYC CPU and desire to use my keyboard instead of my mouse. I’ve set it up with Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS. I’ve also searched a bit for helpful clues, but yet to find out how to use my keyboard instead of my mouse. Maybe I’m not asking the right questions in the search bar.

I did get the terminal window open and ran a simple command with the keyboard, but I can’t change to another program on the screen. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

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Back in the good old days of Ubuntu, had to use keyboard shortcuts mainly the tab key, as back then screen resolution on Linux was dreadful, especially getting NVIDIA drivers installed. The screen res would blow to gigantic proportions, leaving the user miffed and angry at the screen whilst trying to set 1024x768 resolution. No HD screens back then, just a very heavy bad for the environment monitor, that always felt like it was going to burst into flames and take off.

My point being if you want to use the tab button and arrow keys on your keyboard as a mouse, then the option is there. Or get yourself a keyboard with mouse buttons on.

There are also ways of having your apps open with keyboard shortcuts too, though I don’t use Ubuntu anymore. Look for keyboard settings and play around with them. You should be able to reset them if you make a mistake. The way to learn is to dive in at the deep end. When I first started with Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx all those years ago, was chucked in the deep end and had no clue on what I was doing. Many a time I’d break the system, reinstalled countless times, threatened to chuck my computer out of the window on countless occasions.

Now look at Linux today and it is everywhere. We are all here to help and I am sure someone will come along soon to help you better than I? I still like to use a mouse, old school I am, as can never remember what day it is, let alone a keyboard shortcut.

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Hi George,
I am not sure whether you are looking for keyboard shortcuts,
@clatterfordslim has answered that,

or something more drastic…
If you use the I3 window manager, nearly everything you want to do with windows can be done from the keyboard.
It is not easy, you have to install I3 alongside whatever DE you have now, and you have to get used to a tiling window manager, and you have to learn lots of keyboard tricks.

Maybe that is not where you were headed?
Did you perhaps mean you wanted to learn to use CLI commands?

Regards
Neville

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Well, since I am using Linux Ubuntu I wanted to get more used to using the keyboard. What better way than just forcing myself to use the keyboard and not rely on the mouse. I was a M$/Windows user for nearly 40 yrs and finally switched to Ubuntu. I am liking it so much, I just thought I’d give it a whirl. I was hoping for a simpler solution, like a book or pamphlet of ‘guide & tricks’ to use while getting more used to doing it. Thanks for your suggestion anyway.

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I was hoping for a simpler solution, like a book or pamphlet of ‘guide & tricks’ to use while getting more used to doing it. Thanks for your suggestion anyway.

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Your Mileage May Vary…

Back - WAY back - I remember on Windows servers you could enable the cursor (arrow keys) to move the cursor - e.g. if you didn’t have a mouse connected to the Windows Server console… it was horrible stuff I’d never want to do again.

I don’t really use many keyboard shortcuts in Linux - mostly just the Super key (Windows). Many of the other keyboard shortcuts (e.g. clipboard Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are the same as in Windows - and Alt+Spacebar will bring up the “System Menu” for an application window, same as in MS Windows - same as right click on an application window “title bar”).

I use a combination of a ThinkPad keyboard, with Trackpoint (i.e. built in mouse) - but I also use a dedicated mouse as well…

I can’t imagine trying to drive a GUI system without some kinda mouse device…

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What most experienced users of Linux seem to do is

  • use the mouse to move windows around
  • use the mouse to launch commonly used apps
  • do everything else in a terminal window using keyboard
    commands.

I can see that is not quite what you had in mind. There are
keyboard shortcuts, but remembering them is a pain.

https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/shell-keyboard-shortcuts.html.en

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You should switch to some WM they can fully controlled by keyboard (I use sway).
For simulating mouse by keyboard u can use warpd (I use it too).

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