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Pasting X selection (not clipboard contents) with keyboard

Is there a shortcut for copy-paste under X? I'd like to use the keyboard for pasting.

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marked as duplicate by Caleb, Michael Mrozek♦ Jun 30 '11 at 13:37

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Recipes for having a key perform the same action as a mouse middle-blick are given in the answers to this AskUbuntu question.

(Although the question was asked on the Ubuntu SE, there's nothing Ubuntu-specific in it: the solutions work on any X11 system.)

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In graphical terminals, you can try CTRL+SHIFT+C and CTRL+SHIFT+V instead of CTRL+C and CTRL+V.

As an alternative, you can try CTRL+SHIFT+INSERT or SHIFT+INSERT. To copy a word with insert, you can use CTRL+INSERT The first one will paste the last highlighted word, and the second the last copied one.

They won't work everywhere, unfortunately, but it's a good start. You must be aware than in most cases, the best option will be CTRL+C and CTRL+V.

Note that these combinations may have to be mixed to work for different applications... For instance, on KDE, I have to use CTRL+SHIFT+C to copy from a Konsole, and then CTRL+V to paste in firefox/kate... or most of applications that are not a terminal. The key is that CTRL+C CAN'T be used to copy from the terminal, as it is a way to send a signal to the current running process in it... I've tested the combinations with INSER with Konsole, too. One of them (CTRL+SHIFT+INSERT) does not work with netbeans... Consequently, I'm not sure how to emulate the middle click behviour from the keyboard...

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none of these work, to paste the selection (which I did not copy! just selected...) – Bastl Jun 30 '11 at 7:06
I got it. For X I was used to select and paste -- without copying. In gnome-terminal I can use CTRL+SHIFT+C to copy to clipboard. Then the contents are available in other apps. Select-and-paste seems to be a different approach, which works only in a terminal. please clarify if you know more about this. – Bastl Jun 30 '11 at 7:10
X does have two different systems: a select buffer and a cliboard. However I can select in Gnome-terminal and paste into Firefox textfields using Shift+Insert without having copied, so I'm not sure what you have configured differently. – Caleb Jun 30 '11 at 7:13
In standard Ubuntu this doesn't work. Neither shell -> GUI app nor GUI app -> GUI app (Firefox, jEdit). Only shell -> shell. – l0b0 Jun 30 '11 at 7:35

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