Squee! Danny O’Brien is my hero.

Since the Great PowerBook Disaster of 2007, I’ve been casting about for a way to approximate Quicksilver’s combined application launching/window switching in Linux. About 3 seconds after I discovered Quicksilver, having one key combination to always focus an application (whether it had been previously started or not) became so ingrained in my muscle memory that I’m still, 9 months later, disoriented without it.

Well, no more! Danny O’Brien points to wmctrl which, with a little GNOME glue as demonstrated by Danny, does what I need, at least for the 5 or 10 applications I used constantly. A few adjustments to the way I title gnome-terminal and emacs windows, and I’m golden.

I still miss Quicksilver, but this little hack makes my fingers feel like they are home again.