4 ms·

How? They exist and they're customizable, unlike Windows's. And I'll bet you you can't bind xkill to Ctrl-Alt-Esc, and your cursor turns into a little skull-an

How? They exist and they're customizable, unlike Windows's. And I'll bet you you can't bind xkill to Ctrl-Alt-Esc, and your cursor turns into a little skull-and-crossbones, and whatever you click immediately vaporizes via a SIGKILL, on a Mac. :p

breather 3y ago
I'm referring specifically to the use of ctrl as a primary key for both the shell and the ux. How did this happen? Anyway, keybindings are certainly changeable if you're ready to dive into a hundred distinct projects each defining their own key handling. There's no truly system wide way to alter system keybindings in any meaningful sense.
- sunshowers 3y ago
  On balance, I really like that Ctrl is overloaded in that way. Means that Super/Win/Cmd can be used for a wide variety of things on top. For example, I use Super for tiling window management, launching programs, and other things. On macOS, with Yabai and skhd, you can't use plain Cmd to do that. Overloading Ctrl has downsides, but I think it is a net benefit overall.
  - breather 3y ago
    I mean yea, but in practice I run into frustration that the terminal doesn't have a key dedicated to commands far more than I need to do something globally. Anyway, you can use cmd, you just need to have an actual command (non-modifier-key) to pass it—I have no use for a key that does one thing.
    - sunshowers 3y ago
      The problem is that many apps on macOS use Cmd + one or more other modifiers for their own shortcuts. On Linux at least, no apps that I know of use Super in any shortcuts.
- kps 3y ago
  It happened because Windows adopted IBM CUA, and the ‘desktop Linux’ crowd had a fetish for copying Windows. Before that, X11 programs were typically fully configurable, with key bindings in X resources. Currently I think KDE is the least-bad option, as common shortcuts can be remapped globally, but it could be a lot better — Qt can universally remap ‘Control’ shortcuts to the GUI key, but it's only available on Mac builds.

breather 3y ago

I'm referring specifically to the use of ctrl as a primary key for both the shell and the ux. How did this happen? Anyway, keybindings are certainly changeable if you're ready to dive into a hundred distinct projects each defining their own key handling. There's no truly system wide way to alter system keybindings in any meaningful sense.

sunshowers 3y ago
On balance, I really like that Ctrl is overloaded in that way. Means that Super/Win/Cmd can be used for a wide variety of things on top. For example, I use Super for tiling window management, launching programs, and other things. On macOS, with Yabai and skhd, you can't use plain Cmd to do that. Overloading Ctrl has downsides, but I think it is a net benefit overall.
- breather 3y ago
  I mean yea, but in practice I run into frustration that the terminal doesn't have a key dedicated to commands far more than I need to do something globally. Anyway, you can use cmd, you just need to have an actual command (non-modifier-key) to pass it—I have no use for a key that does one thing.
  - sunshowers 3y ago
    The problem is that many apps on macOS use Cmd + one or more other modifiers for their own shortcuts. On Linux at least, no apps that I know of use Super in any shortcuts.
kps 3y ago
It happened because Windows adopted IBM CUA, and the ‘desktop Linux’ crowd had a fetish for copying Windows. Before that, X11 programs were typically fully configurable, with key bindings in X resources. Currently I think KDE is the least-bad option, as common shortcuts can be remapped globally, but it could be a lot better — Qt can universally remap ‘Control’ shortcuts to the GUI key, but it's only available on Mac builds.