I been thinking of anyone could guide me up, that in ubuntu 11.10 with gnome 3,
there is a option ctrl+alt+d to show the desktop by minimizing the current window.
What I was thinking was that if I press ctrl+alt+d it will lead to desktop screen and when I press again ctrl+alt+d to go back to my working window..
As of now it doesnt work in this way ..is there any way out to do that same
The default keybind is Ctrl + Super + d. The setting is called Hide all normal windows
You can change it in Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts > Navigation:
The patch is already released but if you still face that problem use the following:
Click your username on the top right of the screen and select System Settings.
Under Hardware click Keyboard.
Switch to the Shortcuts tab, and click Navigation in the left column. Scroll down and select Hide all normal windows which has a default value of Disabled.
In Ubuntu 12.04 beta2 (gnome-shell 3.4) you can press Super-D to show your desktop, and Super-D again to go back to your previous windows.
If you want a non-keyboard method, there's also the "Show desktop button" option.
Simply visit this link and click on the on/off slider near the top left corner, you'll be prompted to install the widget, and from then on you'll have a small "show desktop" icon next to "Activities in your menu". (Shown here in between my Activities menu and Google Chrome Indicator)
Very handy, IMHO.
Updated 25/09/2017 with the new extension compatible with the current version of GNOME Shell, as suggested by @stefan-hamke. The out-of-date original is here.
Programmatic/CLI way to set the “Hide all normal windows” shorcut (in my case, to Super + D ), tested working on GNOME 45:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings show-desktop "['<Super>d']"
You can launch this from terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T is default keybinding on Ubuntu) or put this in your set-up shell script.
