Must admit I've always used K rather then gnome (foraround 8 years now) until I installed ubuntu about 4 months ago, I flipped a coin as to whether to go kubuntu or see if gnome was as good as people say. (I also fancy trying Beryl (the vista stylee desktop) and that appears to be regarded as working much better on gnome)

The two top blender resources (IMHO) are blender noob to pro and the blender wiki keyboard shortcuts list....

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Reference/Hotkey_Map

Blender is much easier if you have a 3rd arm added and an 10002 key keyboard :).

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.