To look up the Rotate tool key in AI, I googled some tutorials, and here's a truly wonderful bit that I found:
The way you make the Free Transform tool do its intended job (distortion) is to click a corner of the bounding box and while holding the click you hit the Command (Control for Windows) key. This will turn the cursor into a single arrowhead (Fig. C).
I then double checked it with my manual for AI 9 and with the real program. Unbelievable but true! You MUST press Ctrl AFTER you start dragging, otherwise distorting won't work - you get plain scaling instead, same as without Ctrl.
Yes, you read it right. Ctrl+drag does not work, only drag+Ctrl does.
All our talk about Inkscape's "discoverability" pales in comparison to this monstrosity. Adobe never ceases to amaze me.