Noob Question Thread: Ask Any Questions About Linux!

Cyclohexane@lemmy.mlmod to Linux@lemmy.ml – 314 points –

I thought I'll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!

I'll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!

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In the terminal, why can't i paste a command that i have copied to the clipboard, with the regular Ctrl+V shortcut? I have to actually use the mouse and right click to then select paste.

(Using Mint cinnamon)

The terminal world has Ctrl+C and Ctrl+(many other characters) already reserved for other things before they ever became standard for copy paste. For for this reason, Ctrl+Shift+(C for copy, V for paste) are used.

In Terminal land, Ctrl+C has meant Cancel longer than it's meant copy. Shift + Insert does what you think Ctrl+V will do.

Also, there's a separate thing that exists in most window managers called the Primary buffer, which is a separate thing from the clipboard. Try this: Highlight some text in one window, then open a text editor and middle click in it. Ta da! Reminder: This has absolutely nothing to do with the clipboard, if you have Ctrl+X or Ctrl+C'd something, this won't overwrite that.

Old timer here! As many others replying to you indicate, Ctrl+C means SIGINT (interrupt running program). Many have offered the Ctrl+Shift+C, but back in my day, we used Shift+Insert (paste) and Ctrl+Insert (copy). They still work today, but Linux has 2 clipboard buffers and Shift+Insert works against the primary.

As an aside, on Wayland, you can use wl-paste and wl-copy in your commands, so git clone "$(wl-paste)" will clone whatever repo you copied to your clipboard. I use this one all the time

so git clone "$(wl-paste)" will clone whatever repo you copied to your clipboard. I use this one all the time

That's a lot of confidence in not accidentally grabbing a leading/trailing space and grabbing unformatted text. I never trust that I've copied clean text and almost exclusively Ctrl+Shift+V to paste without formatting

You're probably correct. I guess I only do this with right click, copy of URLs.

Try ctrl+shift+v, iirc in the terminal ctrl+v is used as some other shortcut (and probably has been since before it was standard for "paste" I'd bet).

Also linux uses two clipboards iirc, the ctrl+c/v and the right click+copy/paste are two distinct clipboards.

Due to some old school terminal things. Add shift to shortcut combinations, such as Ctrl+Shift+V to paste.

In most terminal (gnome terminal, blackbox, tilix etc.) you can actually override this behavior by changing keyboard shortcut. Blackbox even have a simple toggle that will enable ctrl+c v copy paste.

Gnome console is the only terminal I know that doesn't allow you to change this.

What usually also works on Linux is selecting text with the mouse and pasting it by pressing the middle mouse button (or scroll wheel). You'd still need the mouse, but it's at least a little quicker ☺️

...because that would make Ctrl+C Cut/Copy and that would be really bad. It would kill whatever was running.

So, it becomes Ctrl+Shift+C and paste got moved in the same way for consistency.

I use Ctrl+C to copy far more often than to break a process or something. I demand that Ctrl+Shift+C be reconfigured! 😀

Try Shift+Insert. That's my preferred pasting method in most scenarios.

This is a really great question and it was something that tripped me up back in the day!

The answers above cover it already, so upvoting hoping it's more visible. Thanks for asking it. :)

Ctrl+V is already a shortcut for something (I don't even know what) but to paste just add shift so Ctrl+Shift+V.

(Also a beginner btw)

Ctrl+shift+V is what you should do. Ctrl+V is used by shells for I believe inserting characters without doing some sort of evaluation. I don't remember the specifics though, but yes Ctrl+shift+V to paste.

Use shift+control+v to paste. Shift+control+c to copy in the terminal. It's this way because control+c in the terminal is to break out of the currently running process.

While I don't have the answer as to why, it usually works if you just add a shift, ie. SHIFT+CTRL+V Many terminals also allow you to change the shortcut to copy and paste, so you can adjust for comfort's sake.

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