When I’m working in Windows I tend to use the Ctrl + Shift + Esc shortcut a lot to bring up the task manager.  Since I’ve switched my primary OS over to Ubuntu i still find myself trying to open up a task manager (or system monitor) with the aforementioned shortcut, which isn’t configured by default. To overcome this I simply created a custom keyboard shortcut to open the gnome-system-monitor with the Ctrl + Shift + Esc key combination.

This short tutorial will show you how to create a custom keyboard shortcut for the system monitor in Ubuntu 10.04.

1. Under System > Preferences open up Keyboard Shortcuts
2. Click on Add, to add a new action
3. Enter a name for your shortcut, I’ve named my System Monitor.
4. Enter the command gnome-system-monitor
5. 
6. Click Apply
   
7. You should now see your new Action under Custom Shortcuts in the list
8. Click on the shortcut column of your new action (which should say Disabled)
9. The shortcut text should change to New Shortcut, now press the Ctrl + Shift + Esc key combination.
10. The shortcut column will change once again to your new key combination.
11. 
    
12. Click Close to exit the Keyboard Shortcuts window
13. Now you can use your new shortcut to open up the System Monitor

That’s all there is to it.  Enjoy and have fun.