How To Enable ALT + F2 Shortcut in GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10

ALT + F2 is the commonly used shortcut key combination in Ubuntu Unity to run a command prompt. But, while using GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot , the shortcut key for running the command prompt seems to be disabled and does not work anymore. Due to this GNOME Shell issue, not only ALT + F2, other key combinations also cannot be used as a shortcut to run the command prompt.

Thanks to a simple tip at ubuntuforums discussion thread, we can enable or activate ALT + F2 shortcut in GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot.In this post , we will explain how to enable Alt + F2 shortcut in GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot.

At first, open System Settings and under Hardware category, click on Keyboard option. It launches the  dialog to configure your keyboard settings.

Click on the  Shortcuts tab and navigate to System option in the left panel. Then , you can see that shortcut key for the first entry Show the run command prompt is disabled. Select the entry and click on the Disabled part to activate it. After that, New Shortcut… is seen in place of the Disabled as shown below.

Then, press ALT + F2 and the combination is assigned as the shortcut key to run a command prompt in the GNOME shell in Ubuntu 11.10.

Now, you can close the window and press ALT + F2 shortcut key combination to run a command prompt in the GNOME shell in Ubuntu 11.10 as shown below.

If you cannot see the changes come into the effect , just restart the system.