All of them honor Ctrl+Insert for copy and Shift+Insert for paste. This will work on browsers, editors , shells, etc. FYI this will also work on Windows XP cmd.
Linux has its own set of standards that has evolved to work on keyboards that do not have the super modifier (e.g. in India), but has far more consistency built into it that the Mac
MacBook and it's wannabes (xiaomi,etc) are the only ones that dont.
The only consistent system around is Mac OS X, where Cmd-C is universal copy, Ctrl-C stops the current program in terminal, Cmd-V is universal paste, Ctrl-V opens a vertical block in Vim, Ctrl-A goes to the beginning of the line, and Cmd-A selects all. This works anywhere, from browser to terminal.
Whether you like it or not is your prerogative entirely. However, it is not true that Linux and Windows dont have a standard. They do. And the keys are universal (where universal has a different connotation to your usecase - we are talking non-Western countries and hardware that includes weird little keyboard to debug airplane display units)
You are fully entitled your choice+opinion whether you prefer a different one.
The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from.
This of course says nothing about whether this particular standard fits you. For me, having to keep a flag in mind whether I'm working in a terminal application (with one set of shortcuts), or GUI application (with a different set of shortcuts), is not acceptable, if I can have a setup where the same set works everywhere.
When I switched over from Mac my initial thought was “get this working like my Mac”. After about a day that changed to “learn the Linux way.”
Switched 2 years ago and the only thing I miss after 10 years on OSX is OmniGraffle.
Only macOS gets this right.
I too prefer the MacOS copy/paste shortcuts, but I find that MacOS and Mac apps mix up Ctrl/Cmd just like other systems.
On Mac it's Command+C everywhere.
On macOS, you can also define consistent keyboard shortcuts universally and per-application. This is achieved via a very simple interface in System Preferences -> Keyboards -> Shortcuts. This will apply to all applications because they must all respect and populate the macOS menu bar, the mechanism through which keyboard shortcuts and processed and thus made modifiable. Easy, friendly, user-centric.
But on Linux? Good luck. Between all the various user interface libraries with their own mechanisms for defining and modifying keyboard shortcuts, not to mention those apps that hardcode the shortcuts in order to avoid the utter mess of the mixed desktop environments that so many users are forced to use in order to get certain jobs done.
In this sense, Linux is not a user-centric system because nobody who makes a distribution, even the better ones, gives a toss about the user; it's all about the developer's manifestos and freedoms long before it's ever about the user. The average user who just wants to work, not sit there slaving over a billion different and wildly inconsistent configuration file formats each in different locations, who just wants the damned Copy command to require the same two-finger salute in one program as another, is resolutely not the one being catered for.
Linux distributions are just as opinionated as Windows and macOS; DIY distros are utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of people, including the HN crowd who, just like the technically illiterate we sometimes hold our noses up to, also have lives to live.
Usually, pressing Control-c will copy the content of the primary selection to the clipboard.
I think some other terminal emulators might also let you do this.
I have gone the other way. One of the thumb-buttons on my Ergodox EZ is"Super + C" makro. The other is "Super + V".
One-thumb copy/paste.
setxkbmap -option ctrl:swap_lwin_lctl -option ctrl:swap_rwin_rctlFor example I can type Ctrl-b while editing the URL in the browser omnibar to move the cursor back a character or alt-b to move it back a word, just like you can in the terminal and then use "Win"-b to bookmark a page.
And your command changes the keys you use for moving the cursor in the terminal.
MacOS's system is a better system that will never be adopted because there no will (just suck it up as you say), market pressure or authority that would impose it.
And when I can't or don't want to do that, I right click and choose Copy.
If I want to use another operating system - Windows or MacOS, it drives me batty that I have to keep going around copy pasting things.
I tend to agree with you that having a difference between Ctrl and Command is nice. But it doesn't actually solve the problem - it works _because_ MacOS is a minority, the last holdout.
In your web browser, Cmd-A will select all the available text but Ctrl-A will move your cursor to the start of the line. In your terminal, perhaps Cmd-A will select all the visible text but Ctrl-A will increment the number under the pointer (since you're running VIM in it).
If the Meta key hadn't died of death and Linux developers had kept expecting it to be around, there could also be clashes between Cmd and Meta.
I switched from Linux to OSX/MacOS around eight years ago, and the better and (to me) more intuitive modifier keys have been one of the features that have kept me there; along with the convenience of Emacs/Readline keybindings for text editing everywhere.
Getting keybindings to work the same way in Linux currently involves a Rube Goldberg setup of GTK3 key themes [1] and AutoKey [2] for me, and some things still don't work right (Super-W closing a single tab in Firefox/Chrome, etc.) Also, it looks like key themes are going away in GTK4 [3].
The Hawck daemon cited elsewhere in the conversation looks promising, maybe that'll work better.
[1] http://shallowsky.com/blog/linux/gtk3-emacs-key-theme.html
If, in about:config, you set ui.key.accelKey to 91, then Super-W will close a single tab (and Super-T will open a single tab etc.). This obviously won't work in Chromium, though.
And I say this as someone with both macOS and Linux laptops that I work from, but because of the above and other similar things I think you're always up for disappointment if you expect to get Linux to be exactly like macOS.