this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2026
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I still double-click the left corner every now and then. I've found myself using CTRL+INS and Shift+INS lately because CTRL+C/V keeps giving me very inconsistent results. Particularly in terminals. I remember using the the same hotkeys in MS-DOS editor.
This is how I get around an application at work that prevents copying and pasting with CTRL+C/V. I was surprised to find that it worked.
Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V for copy and paste come from non-Unix (I'd say Windows itself, but they may have stolen it from elsewhere), and so it makes sense that those two keys have other special meanings under Unix and its descendants.
Specifically, they mean "Stop what you're doing" and "The next character is to be entered without special meaning" in most shells, the most common programs that run, often as the main program, in/on a terminal.
As such, most terminal emulators in Linux GUIs reserve those keypresses for their Unix-y functions. Most of the good ones move copy and paste to Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V instead.
MS-DOS and Windows command prompts also inherit their use of Ctrl+C from Unix, by way of 86-DOS and CP/M, and were in there long before Microsoft adopted Ctrl+C for copy in a GUI, which is where those other Insert-based keybinds you mention came in.
For an example of Unix Ctrl+V, try
echo hello[Ctrl+V][Ctrl+H]worldin a Linux terminal shell and press Enter. You'll see the command asecho hello^Hworldand when you press Enter, it will displayhellworld, because that embedded Ctrl+H is a backspace.