I open Blender on it’s own workspace. To switch between workspaces, (in GNOME, at least,) press Ctrl+Alt+‘Relevent Arrow Key’.
MWM[/quote]
Good grief!. I’ve been using Linux, well, forever actually and you just taught me something new (and very useful). Thank’s:)
Please don’t consider this question embarrassing. I was so stunned to see a question I could answer that I couldn’t resist. 
Also note that even when you work through things very carefully, there can be “stupid” problems because of inconsistencies in the documentation. I went very carefully through the gingerbread man tutorial, for example, and from the start the docs were talking about how you get pink and blue faces when you select/unselect them. Well, you don’t – unless you select the Draw Faces toggle on the mesh tools menu. But this isn’t noted in the docs, and it wasn’t the default behavior of the program. Somebody had to point it out to me in a thread about Gus. Given what most Internet forums seem to be like, I’ve really enjoyed the civil nature of this one. Now I just need to continue learning Blender in my copious free time. %|