March 15, 2026
You switch to Linux for the first time. You open the terminal. You run a command, see some output you want, select it with your mouse, and press Ctrl+C to copy it. Nothing is in your clipboard. You sit there confused.
That confusion spawned an AskUbuntu thread from 2011 that's still getting traffic today. GNOME's official answer, per their keyboard shortcuts documentation: just use Ctrl+Shift+C.
Every single other application on your system copies with Ctrl+C. Their default terminal does not. And this is presented to new Linux users as a completely normal situation.
Their argument is that Ctrl+C is taken by SIGINT and it's been the behavior since Unix terminals in the 1970s. But what stops us from just combining both actions under Ctrl+C shortcut?
Is there a text selection active?
If yes — they want to copy. Send copy.
If no — they want to interrupt. Send SIGINT.
That's the entire algorithm — which is what almost every other terminal does:
Some people suggested to just bind copy to Ctrl+C. But I find it convenient to have both copy and SIGINT actions on this keybind. That's the expectation I've built from years of terminal use.
Developers said that their decision reflects desire for predictability, so any shortcut is only used to do one specific thing. But when you select text in your terminal your intent is completely obvious. There are no predictability issues. That is incredibly stupid.
It is worth mentioning that many other terminals such as Kitty, WezTerm, Konsole also don't have Ctrl+C copying by default. This is ridiculous! But at least all of them have an option to configure context-aware copy/SIGINT behavior.
What breaks my heart about this is that new users who stumble on Ctrl+C not working for them often get told to just learn new shortcuts. Nobody in those forums questions whether this is actually the right solution.
Recently I've seen reports from multiple real-life friends who were moving to Linux that Ctrl+C doesn't copy text in their terminal. And when they were looking for a solution they found no mentions of combining both shortcuts. I wish there was more attention to this problem.
That's the reason I came to hate GNOME. If you still use Ctrl+Shift+C for copy, fix your configs. It takes 5 seconds.