Hi! First post. hooray!

Q: Is there any way, in GNOME, to input simple no-output commands like

without bringing up a virtual terminal (or the likes)?

I'm a person who inputs commands and then end up with 15 inactive gnome-terminal's per hour. Partly because I haven't yet specified an alias with appended, but also because this code does not necessarily kill the terminal.

I'm looking for a way to, for example, start firefox by holding the SUPER-key and typing firefox (then possibly execute said command by releasing SUPER-key.)

I know there are GNOME keyboard shortcuts. But each of them needs to be configured, and there is a finite number of physical keys. (For some reason)

In a pseudo-specification: The program I'm looking for would probably dump any output in /dev/null and send any input to the "standard IN stream". Probably some sort of daemon with no GUI component.

Thanks for your time. It's not an urgent matter.



EDIT: The pseudo-specification implies that it's not GNOME-specific in any way; more like an alternative to BASH that is neither GU- nor CL-I.

Yes, there are at least two ways:

1) Run a application window: on the gnome standard keyboard shortcuts, hit Alt-F2 and type any command you want, like gedit, firefox, etc

2) If your keyboard have special shortcuts keys, bind one of them to a special command. Go to System/Preferences/Keyboard Shortcuts. On the panel you can see several actions pre-defined and its keys.

What I would like to know is how to create my own action on this list. When you figure out this, please, give me a note, ok ?

regards,

Hi!

Thanks for the reply.

I'm aware of the GNOME keyboard shortcuts function. To add an action of your own I think you simply click "add" and define the command together with a name.

To bind the action to a key you need to click on the far right of the entry and it should prompt you for a key combination.

What I'm looking for is more of a way to send commands in the background (not the command, but the sending/request itself). Much like gnome listening for shortcut key combinations, but a "daemon shell" that listens for *any* keyboard input and "redirects it to stdIN" (pseudo), provided some super-key is being held down.

It might just be a crazy idea, though. I can see how this can be downright dangerous.

If you want any kind of interaction, you have to use a terminal---I missed a reason that you do not want to use a terminal...?

If you are in a GUI and open a terminal emulator, then any process you start there will die when you close the terminal.

You can also use one of the consoles accessed with ctrl-alt-F1 (and F2, F3, etc.)

Ok. Thanks for the answer.

What I would like is to input commands to the system without a visible interaction.

Sort of like an invisible shell. I'm not sure if this even makes sense, but I don't see why it should be impossible.

Thought of a workaround:

Bring up the gnome application runner with ALT-F2. Make this window class 100% transparent with compiz.

That would sort of reproduce what I'm looking for. (In fact, it's far from it, but the behaviour might give a clue to what I want.)

Bare with me

I don't really need the terminal ever to close, just for it to run in the background, like a daemon.

As for the reason I don't want to use a terminal;
I don't need a shell to get in my face, just to do it's job.

ohh, I see. No, sorry, looks cool but I never heard about such program.
I guess you need to write your own daemon....

Yea, if I could do more than some java programming, I might have given it a try

I guess I'll hope for either someone else finding it to be a reasonable idea and code it

Or telling me it is a linux-versial impossibility (and why it is).

Also, there's these popup consoles:
http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/119067

Which are quite neat. But are just frontends to the shell, like gnome-terminal is.