There is an unintended benefit to putting an obstacle between people who don't know how to use the terminal and pasting code into it.
this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Expanding on this, we could make it so that root must use ed(1) to edit files?
No, only vi
vi is so outdated, we use viii now. You're two versions behind!
Ha! Butterflies!
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Control+C is used to kill a process in the terminal and that shouldn't be overwritten. If it is, you'd have to create a totally separate key binding to kill a process. Seems unnecessarily complex when Control+Shift+C works just fine.
The article doesn't suggest using Control+C. It talks about dedicated copy and paste key codes, and you can program your keyboard to map those codes to whatever keys you like. They suggest Fn+C.
standards.xkcd
Holy shit can you guys read the article please? It's an existing standard and a dedicated keycode
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We could use Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert like in the last three decades, but some of these keyboards apparently forgot about the Insert key.
Well yeah but shift insert is annoying as hell since the keys are so far apart
I confirmed that these already supported a number of terminals plus QT and GTK. They could also be mapped to be more ergonomic with a programmable keyboard:
- Control+Insert: Copy
- Shift+Delete: Cut
- Shift+Insert: Paste
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Kitty has a setting that makes Ctrl-C copy text, but only if you've selected something. If you haven't it does a regular break. Best of both worlds!
Another KiTTY user! Can you share that setting?
Had to look it up for you. I use (in kitty.conf):
map ctrl+c copy_and_clear_or_interrupt
map ctrl+v paste_from_clipboard
Obviously you only need the first one for the copy bit but having paste as well is nice.
Control+C is used to kill a process in the terminal and that shouldn’t be overwritten.
Agreed. The post didn't suggest that.
Seems unnecessarily complex when Control+Shift+C works just fine.
For people already using programmable keyboards global copy/paste shortcuts are a nice perk.
I spend nearly all my day in a browser or a terminal and as I use a terminal and browser that already support this, the effect is 99% complete.
I feel like you may have misunderstood the article. It's talking about how support is increasing for dedicated Copy keys, and that programmable keyboards make it easy to use dedicated Copy keys. The article does not mention changing the behaviour of Ctrl-C.
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Come on, having a 3-key combo for such a common task is a PITA. There's a reason people have been complaining about this for decades.
The first time you accidentally type Control-C into a terminal and cancel an important process when you meant to copy some text it becomes a PITA.
Exactly. I do it pretty regularly and I've been using Linux for 20 years.
And yet people here are still saying "no biggie". It's pure status quo bias.
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And I'm pretty sure this key combination predates copy and paste key combinations.
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My patch to add Copy/Paste keycode support to the Cosmic Terminal was merged!
As someone who likes Rust but dislikes the look of COSMIC, are there plans to allow theming?
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Holy fucking shit. I just realized that's why Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V don't work in Micro. This has been eye opening.
I have been trying to bind ctrl c to copy in micro and alacrity, I can't find a way.
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Honestly, this is a nice feature of macOS (or at least iTerm 2; I don’t use the official terminal). I know CTRL-C is used to kill processes and we all have that muscle memory but I usually try to change that on my personal Linux installs because I’ve hit it by mistake before.
I used to use CTRL+INSERT for copy and SHIFT+INSERT for paste but there’s usually no insert key on laptops or even small keyboards. It’s probably time to just adapt.
⌘C and ⌘V work in the native MacOS terminal app as well.
It’s the #1 thing that drives me crazy about Linux.
It seems obvious. You’ve got a Windows/Apple/Super key and a Control key. So you’d think Control would be for control characters and Windows/Apple/Super would be for application things.
I can understand Windows fucking this up, cuz the terminal experience is such a low priority. But Linux?
There’s some projects like Kinto and Toshy which try to fix it, but neither work on NixOS quite yet.
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I still use ctrl+ins and shift+ins every now and then. I've hit ctrl+shift+c a few times while in my browser (Vivaldi) which unfortunately is bound to "create note". Ctrl+ins is a great workaround than using an extra neuron when in a terminal to also hit shift when copying.
I've been using ctrl+c for copy and ctrl+v for paste for over a decade in my linux terminal by remapping the interrupt to ctrl+x.
It's basic ergonomics and user friendliness.
I do it on all my personal devices and servers.
Nothing bad happened in those ~15 years that I've been doing that. What the fuck are you arguing about?
I might actually do that too, but not for ergonomics. I'm just going nuts with sometimes ctrl-c,. sometimes ctrl-shift-c, sometimes ctrl-ins
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selection autocopy and wheel/shift ins pasting is superior to all alternatives imo
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Centre click is a godsend though. I recently had to start using Windows again and I keep instinctively hitting it.
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That's why we have mice copy/paste bindings on most systems too. Highlighting text auto copies, and scroll wheel click pastes. Not all do this, but many do and have for a while.
That’s a popular terminal feature, but I regularly get tripped up because my terminal has that behavior but my browser does not.
That’s what’s nice about a global solution.
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Ctrl+Ins gang rise up
Wow. I haven't seen a Sun keyboard like that in .. geez forever. Whose were fun times. I was younger then.
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Nice !! I like the 'old new again' effect ^^
I use a key remapper to give me the readline keys everywhere. Though I've used XKeysnail and xremap and they're both a bit flakey, so if anyone has better recommendations that work on X11 and Wayland, I'm all ears.
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