this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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    Apparently, importing ~/.config/kglobalshortcutsrc is enough for the shortcut to show up in the System Settings, but not enough to load the shortcut. Disabling, applying and re-enabling and applying again also doesn't help, and neither does re-assigning to the same shortcut, which resulted in this lovely error dialog.

    top 22 comments
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    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 31 points 1 week ago (6 children)

    I thought "meta" referred to the Alt key and "super" referred to the key that usually has the Winblows logo on it. Was I wrong or is the terminology just inconsistent?

    [–] lemmyng@piefed.ca 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    This 15 year old post on AskUbuntu explains the differences between those keys, and their historical background: https://askubuntu.com/questions/19558/what-are-the-meta-super-and-hyper-keys

    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago

    Gotta love those legacy paradigms. Thanks for the link!

    [–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    The Alt key is Alt. Why would it need another label?

    [–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 8 points 1 week ago

    There's quite a long convoluted history to key names. In the early days there were META1...META4... which were typically assigned to SHIFT, CONTROL, ALTERNATE, COMMAND, OPTION, [OS NAME], and others.

    [–] exu@feditown.com 9 points 1 week ago

    KDE calls "super" "meta" for some reason.

    [–] Euphoma@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

    In emacs that is what those keys are called

    [–] homes@piefed.world 2 points 1 week ago

    Although I’m not sure about that, my first reaction to the super key, not working would be to press other keys like control our alt

    [–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    No they are interchangeable

    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Well, no, they aren't. Cuz they're two different keys. What you mean is that they're referred to inconsistently, which is bad in a technical discipline.

    [–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    I never saw the Alt key referred to as anything else than Alt

    On MacOS it is option or something

    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Mostly older Linux apps refer to Alt as Meta. But since those apps predate the "Windows key", it seems foolish to also start calling that meta.

    [–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Wait there wasnt a Windows key since forever?

    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Computer keyboards have been around since at least the 70s and the Windows key only started appearing on keyboards with the release of Windows 95. I am a child of the 80s and my first 3 or 4 computers had keyboards with no Windows key.

    [–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

    TIL!

    But to be honest, that was also pretty much before standardization. I have never seen anyone use Meta for the Alt key.

    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Its definitely not common. But especially in Unix-like software, referring to the Windows key as Meta introduces unnecessary confusion, especially to newcomers.

    Prime example: a lot of newcomers use Nano as their terminal text editor. It refers to the Alt key with the abbreviation M for Meta. So someone who's already taking a huge plunge into a vast and complicated technical topic has to first learn that M means Meta which means Alt and then also has to learn that in other contexts, Meta means the Windows key.

    Now, maybe the solution is for Nano to change, not Plasma. But one way or another, it should be standardized.

    [–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago

    Interesting, nano also does other things like referring to Ctrl as ^ which is extremely weird

    This makes me long for the good old days when the See Also section of the Wikipedia article for recursion included a link to recursion

    If you want to see humorlessness incarnate, check out the handful of people vehemently opposing reintroducing it on the talk page..

    [–] Covenant@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    I was struggling with this before only to find out you need to press apply before it to work.

    I done tried that 🀷

    [–] herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    It is easier to install Linux than to figure out whatever this thing is.

    [–] Cloudstash@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

    Wait, what is not clear about the message?