I read a lot of answers online that its a bad idea, but the arguments did not make a lot of sense. “it’s a heavily ingrained part of the eco system”. Well if I can change it, what’s the deal?
It makes more sense to make an interrupt signal be the harder shortcut, and copy to be ctrl+C, matching other programs and platforms.
Aside from the many decades of history behind the ctrl+c key combo, you may also be interested in an alternative shortcut for copying/pasting that works in every application: ctrl+insert for copy, shift+insert for paste. These combos work in browsers, terminals, text editors, and sometimes even websites that block pasting via ctrl+V.
I often use other signals myself (ctrl+D for closing an input, ctrl+z for backgrounding a process).
Other less used signals that are probably also available: ctrl+\ for SIGQUIT will gracefully terminate some programs (dd), or print diagnostic output in others (ping). ctrl+Q will reset the current line in the terminal. ctrl+R will let you search through your command line history in many Linux shells, and will repaint the screen while a command is running (which is useful when you’re using a TTY and some kind of system log suddenly comes rolling in over your running program’s output). Ctrl+S will pause a program, ctrl+Q will continue execution; this is useful for when you’re looking at commands printing loads of output without having to resort to
less/more.That said, some terminals do bind SIGINT to ctrl+shift+C. Use whatever you prefer, I suppose!
Why have I never heard of Ctrl+insert combo? I almost don’t believe you. Will test when I get home
Shift+Insert/Ctrl+Insert used to be an IBM thing back in the late 80s. It’s been on PCs since the days of Windows 3.1, but most keyboard with shortcut button labels chose to label ctrl+c/v when GUIs became the norm. Microsoft copied a bunch of IBM’s shortcuts, like using tab to move to the next control and shift+tab to move to a previous control, or alt+f4 for closing a window, or using F5 for refreshing; it’s an interesting bit of legacy that many people don’t know about.
If you’ve also stuck with Apple/Unix, you’ve probably never noticed any of this. On many *nix platforms, selecting text and then pasting with the middle mouse button was the norm. This also still works today! However, the selection+middle click clipboard is separate from the ctrl+c/ctrl+insert clipboard.
Oh, I also forgot Shift+Delete for cutting text.
Linux has two paste buffers, at least in X and I assume Wayland is the same? . One buffer for ctrl-c/ctrl-v and one for selecting text/middle mouse. ctrl-insert and shift-insert are using the “last mouse selected text” paste buffer.
It’s the same yeah
Ctrl+Insert gets pretty close, but some laptops, including Mac books, don’t have insert on their keyboard. 😔
I believe Macbooks can copy/paste with command+C instead, though? The lack of keys is annoying on some Windows laptops, though. You could probably rebind keys or add shortcuts for super+c/v to copy/paste to make them behave like Macbooks (i.e. bind them to wl-clip or some other clipboard command) but I’ve never had to experiment with that.
Command+C on Mac books work, yes, But that still means inconsistencies across different platforms. I am forced to use macos for work, and I try to unify my shortcuts across the two platforms. Otherwise it’s disorienting using my personal computer after a day of work
My solution for this has been on my Linux machine, using keyd, to swap alt and super, and map super+c, super+v to copy and paste. (I also map super+L, super+R, super+T and super+W in Firefox to the control- equivalents using keyd’s per-application bindings functionality)
First thing I do on a new laptop is remapping a key I won’t be using much to Insert, which I use all the time :)