Centre click is a godsend though. I recently had to start using Windows again and I keep instinctively hitting it.
this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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One of the first things I had to disable when I switched to linux lol Middle click has so many other uses in windows that made it sooo jarring. Ctrl c and crtl v are good enough for me. (Or shift in terminals)
Middle-click often works when ctrl+c/ctrl+v won't. It's also a separate buffer giving you the ability to have two different things copy/paste-able
sigh can't believe that no one mentioned that there is a default set of shortcuts that are used across all GNU programs, and it's been the default since way before Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V existed. You can easily copy/paste stuff in any terminal using the same keypresses you would on Emacs, I.e. Ctrl+space to start selection, Alt+W to copy and Ctrl+Y to paste. In fact you can navigate the entire line the same way, not just copy/pasting but moving back and forward, selecting and deleting stuff, e.g. Ctrl+A Ctrl+K cuts the entire line.
Unless you activate Vi mode (which most terminals support) and then you can use the same keypresses you would on Vi, including ci" and other cool stuff that's much more powerful that simple copy/paste.
There is a default, it's just not the same as word uses.
You describing a kill ring which is internal to the shell and not synced to the system clipboard. Nor does it work in GUI apps.
The benefit of universal bindings is not have to learn one method for GUI apps, another for terminals and a third for shells implementing the kill-ring like bindings.
selection autocopy and wheel/shift ins pasting is superior to all alternatives imo
I love it when I have a mouse. It's terrible on modern touchpads though :(
fully agree. i usually sacrifice one of my less used keys and bind it as a left mouse click instead.
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.
Always a pleasure to meet another Micro user.
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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.
Expanding on this, we could make it so that root must use ed(1) to edit files?
you're evil. i love it.
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My patch to add Copy/Paste keycode support to the Cosmic Terminal was merged!
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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.
Sun keyboards had dedicated copy and paste keys.
Also the illusive "Stop" key that you needed to break into the boot rom.
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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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!
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.
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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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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.
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