Back in my day, when we pressed Ctrl+S, the terminal froze, and that's just the way we liked it.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/12107/how-to-unfree...

Ctrl-Q whew

> Back in my day, when we pressed Ctrl+S, the terminal froze, and that's just the way we liked it.

I don't think anyone needs (or even wants) the terminal to freeze on such a common shortcut in 2024.

Personally, I have reclaimed Ctrl S for word delete (usually done by Alt-d)

Related: why does the shortcut to delete back a word (^W), close my browser tab?

Delete current word, delete current tab. Its related.

That's why I think MacOS is superior: it actually uses the "meta" key for useful stuff. So, Cmd-W would close the tab, and Ctrl-W would probably still delete a word (can't check right now, but it has a lot of 80s-era keyboard shortcuts for text still working)

macOS uses a lot of Emacs bindings. Ctrl-a for beginning of line, ctrl-e for end, etc etc.

And, agreed, macOS' use of shortcuts is fantastic and I wish I could replicate it on Linux.

If you use gnome/xfce:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Emacs"

    xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/KeyThemeName -s Emacs

Try both commands.

Very cool!

I also want to use Command (Super or Hyper?), which really improves keyboard shortcuts. Command + left/right = jump to beginning or end of line, Option + left/right = jump to beginning/end of word. I know you can do the same with Control + Shift, but some apps don't support it. Plus Cmd+c/x/v for copy/cut/paste works fine in terminals, I don't have to remember to "code switch" my shortcut "language". Cmd+Backspace deletes the whole line, etc etc.

I just swap Ctrl and Caps Lock, much better.

setkbmap us -option ctrlL:swapcaps -option compose:rwin

You can place that command at XFCE's startup settings for applications.

You missed the point; Ctrl-C is never going to be "copy" in a terminal, since that shortcut is already in use. Cmd-C can work everywhere, but GUI applications on linux do not default to that.

> You missed the point; Ctrl-C is never going to be "copy" in a terminal, since that shortcut is already in use

My `stty intr ^X` disagrees

I've made Ctrl-C do copy paste in the terminal, even in vim, with a special function for wayland:

vnoremap <C-C> <CMD>call WLCopy()<CR>

I bound WindowsKey-C to run the command "xsel|xsel -b" which copies the active selection to the clipboard. It's a small step in the right direction; it's possible to get paste working as well, but that takes awareness of apps (or reconfiguring all GUI applications to use the same shortcut as the terminal).

I use emacs and I respect emacs developers, but it is not originally emacs bindings: http://unix-kb.cat-v.org/

This still happens to me too often. Especially annoying in web-based editors.

it also switches focus window, which is makes things even more confusing

That gets me multiple times a day. What is even worse is ^h opens the history instead of just deleting the last character.

> I don't think anyone needs (or even wants) the terminal to freeze on such a common shortcut in 2024.

I find it rather useful to keep important output of programs on the screen when it is impossible (or I forget) to pipe them into a pager.

Super helpful for basically anything in a terminal. Stuff is going to flow by pretty quickly or at least keep bumping the terminal every couple seconds, usually when you _least_ want it to do so. Reading off whatever your program emitted while it's pushing the terminal up every half a second gets really annoying without Ctrl-S. It's probably the most used terminal shortcut after Ctrl-C for me.

That's a fine argument, but not relevant for when you're in an editor -- and modern TUI apps disable XON/XOFF for that reason.

We should concede that /etc/profile ought to disable that with stty by default.

> I like how vim is modal, but some Windows shortcuts (like Control-C) just make too much sense to given them up on Linux

Ctrl-C does work in the GUI. That said, one thing I like about Linux is being able to highlight text using the mouse and then pasting it by middle-clicking. I don't have to interact with the keyboard at all to copy and paste text that way.

Remapping Ctrl-O denies the ability to switch modes. That’s what turns this from simply an opinionated config to a breaking change.

That's fair, changes should try to preserve existing uses