On Linux, Control-C and Control-V don't work for copying and pasting in terminals. The Control modifier is used for its original purpose of inserting control codes. Instead, terminal apps require an extra Shift modifier, like Control+Shift+C.
But what if there were hidden shortcut combos for copy and paste
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.
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.
“Super” is the one modifier key that you can rely on overwriting without interfering with normal app shortcuts, so I’d personally rather prefer if applications don’t start trying to use the Super key for their own things.
I have set up Super key shortcuts for all kinds of desktop management operations, opening the launcher/terminal/browser, switching workspaces/windows, closing windows, move/resize, switch tiling mode, audio control, make my package manager install updates, switch between a set of resolutions, activate my password manager, etc.
That said, Copy/Paste is a general/global enough operation that I would not mind having Super+C/V send to the current active app the Copy/Paste keycode (I might do that actually, now that I know that there’s a code apps are starting to support!). But I think it should be the desktop environment the one configuring “Super” shortcuts, not the app.
It makes sense for each application to have their own interpretation of what does each control character (or Control shortcut) do. It’s not like all control characters have a very reliable meaning to begin with… I mean, the backspace character (Control+H) was originally meant to move a character backwards without deleting it, but most screen terminals didn’t do that. If what you mean is alternate characters from Unicode and so, then the “Alt” key would be more suitable for that. And in ISO keyboards, “AltGr” is a very common way to have combinations that insert alternate symbols.
⌘C and ⌘V work in the native MacOS terminal app as well.
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.