Linux – How to change default terminal emulator in MATE

Issuing binary characters to the terminal screen is risky, as some control sequences are interpreted as commands that change the terminal mode, and not only for colors. This is because the Linux terminal emulates the antique VT100 console (with additions). See this post for a good explanation of the problem.

To sanitize your tty use one or several of the following commands :

• reset
• stty sane
• tput init
• tput reset

A surer way might be to use the stty command to save and reset all your setting at once:

1. Use stty -g to print the current settings in stty-readable format
2. Copy the resulting string
3. Add to your shell init file (.bashrc or whatever) the alias (s for sane) as :
   alias s='stty <output string from step 2>'
4. Now when confusion occurs, just type : s Enter

I think it'd be most useful if I took this a piece at a time. The general problem is: who is the key press intended for? The terminal, or the program running inside the terminal?

As an example, "screen", which is kindof a terminal, uses Ctrl+A as a prefix for its commands, to distinguish them from things going to the running program itself. (And provides a way to send Ctrl+A.)

gnome-terminal has several keys that it captures to do various things, including some of the ones you ask about.

Also keep in mind that a terminal's "highlighting" is separate from the terminal's cursor position. Some terminals have no ability to highlight at all.

Now, taking this key combinations at a time:

left+right arrows to move left+right ctrl+arrow to move an entire word home/end to move to start/end of line

Move what left and right? Bash can be configured to do this, and typically is by default. Typically, these move the cursor position.

ctrl+c/ctrl+v to copy/paste

First: does copy/paste even make sense? If you're at a VT, you don't really have a clipboard, especially if X isn't running.

Some terminals can copy text in the output, and some will also "paste" by simulating you typing the contents of the clipboard. Ctrl+Shift+V, for example, is paste in gnome-terminal, which may help. (And Ctrl+Shift+C is copy.) As discussed earlier, the big problem with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V is they overlap with common terminal/program commands. (Ctrl+C is send interrupt (SIGINT) and Ctrl+V is verbatim.)

Some terminals also support two modes of copying data: a more normal "just copy", and what's known as "block select" or "block copy". (Hold Ctrl, and then drag while in gnome-terminal for example.)

Additionally, xsel -b can be used to pipe clipboard contents around. Depends on the exact situtation whether xsel or the terminal's version of paste is more useful. See man xsel.

shift+arrow to highlight text shift+ctrl+arrow to highlight an entire word

Your terminal's highlight (if it has this capability) is separate from cursor position. Again, lack of available key combos is probably a factor. Keep in mind a highlight has two positions: either the start and end, or the upper left and lower right corners. How do you manage both?

Finally, note that many GUI terminals, double-clicking a word will highlight it. (And in X, copy to the primary selection.)

screen, as an example, has keys to switch into a mode for moving around the buffer (previous output) and copy/pasting.

I think if you make adequate use of xsel and the primary selection, you will find clipboard operations are both rare enough and complex enough to merit using the mouse.