While looking for inking techniques I stumbled upon this image

http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery ... aving1.png

And found the ALT+ drag to thin and SHFT+ ALT drag to thicken very interesting.

However when I tried this on a calligraphy stroke of my own I couldnt get the thin/thickening to work.

When I hit ALT and dragged my cursor changed to a hand and the whole Inkscape window was moved with my drag.

Ive looked at the Help > Tutorial and it doesnt mention anything about the ALT drag

Im using 0.46 on Debian Linux

Am I missing a step in there somewhere?

Try the tweak tool. That screenshot was done before Bulia moved that stuff to its own tool.
Really need to get it updated, seems to confuse people fairly regularly.

This is problem of your window manager - it overwrites Inkscape shortcut.
Solution:
- Gnome: Go to System → Preferences → Windows, and under Movement Key, pick "Super" instead of "Alt".
- KDE: Go to the K Menu → System Settings → Look and Feel → Windows, and under Movement Key, pick "Super" instead of "Alt".

Thanks very much to the both of you. Ill check that setting in the morning