I have been using Linux on and off from the first shipped CDs from Ubuntu. Nowadays I mainly use OS X, because my employer provides us with MacBooks I can use in private and I like the UNIX base and I do not have to tinker to get things to work.
I just set up an old Thinkpad for my kids to start their digital journey with Linux Mint and am considering switching my private stuff to a separate computer.
What I really love about OS X is the consistent usage of alt and the command keys. It basically follows the concept: „you want to do something, press Command + …“ and „you want an alternative character? Press alt + …“.
My experience is that Linux key usage was inspired by Windows at first and Windows did not have a Command key.
Would it be hard to get the same behavior as on OS X with a Linux system?
Yes, it is definitely possible. How it is achieved largely depends on the desktop environment pr window manager you use.
I use the meta key largely for things related to windows and workspaces. I use the capslock key as the compose key. And, the right alt key for alternative characters. Additionally, there is Ibus for typing a variety of scripts and languages.
I use Toshy https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy
There’s some small issues with the alt key behaviour in some applications (and workarounds for that), but other than that it works really well for my OS X configured brain.
If it helps, the Windows/Linux logic is basically:
- Ctrl key for triggering actions within an application.
- Alt key for navigating the UI of an application via the keyboard.
- Meta/Super/Windows key for triggering actions outside of applications (on the OS level).
Well, and Ctrl, Alt, Shift also serve for alternative characters when you’re typing. And some application or OS shortcuts wildly combine modifiers for more complex keybindings. And of course, some applications just didn’t get the note of how this generally works. I won’t claim, it really follows rules, but yeah, it’s not generally complete chaos either.
If I remember correctly, you can define the modifier key in KDE. Not sure though, you might have to test it out.
That would be the fastest way. Apart from that, it’s very much possible by binding every possible action to different keypresses. That would be long and stenuous.
I think, what you’re describing used to be a thing, but there’s now a somewhat different, more granular way of rebinding keybindings:
However, it should be said that these will only apply within KDE applications. If you’re using third-party stuff, like Firefox, GIMP, VLC etc., they won’t apply.
If you really want to go hard on rebinding all kinds of keys for any application, you can also do things like these:
As cool as both of these are, and as much as I would still generally recommend picking KDE for these kind of customization possibilities, I wouldn’t recommend overdoing either. You won’t be able to use other PCs anymore…
I actually went through and customized all the Plasma keybindings to be more like Mac a couple days ago. It works pretty well, but yeah unfortunately only in KDE applications. And there’s still some stuff you can’t change such as the “extend selection to start/end of word” shortcuts always being set to ctrl+shift+left/right even if you set the “move to start/end of word” keys to option+left/right.
