My work flow depends heavily on Win + V and Win + Shift + S, both on my main desktop and RDP’ed into other Windows systems while sharing a clipboard. I’m interested in trying Linux as my daily driver, and I am looking for suggestions that will offer the least friction in how I operate. The above items are must haves and my hope is that the solution “just works” without having to set up a whole mess of macros or workarounds.
I am familiar with Debian and Ubuntu, so Linux will not be a new experience for me, though most of my work has been from command line interactions. My hope would be a distro I can stand up in a few hours that will let me continue to RDP into Windows systems and keep using Windows hot keys on both the Linux desktop and the Windows systems.
You can change the shortcuts on most desktops. At least I know you can on KDE and Cinnamon.
I believe any distro with KDE Plasma will suit your needs. It comes with the exact keybindings for what you are used to from Windows. My personal recommendation would be Fedora (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition). You can use Remmina as the RDP client. From my experience it works the best.
It comes with the exact keybindings for what you are used to from Windows.
Except Kate/Kwrite defaults to Ctrl+R for replace, CTRL+H for find selected, and something else I don’t remember. The shortcuts can be changed though.
Honestly, I’d recommend anything with KDE Plasma, as the shortcuts are dead simple to set up. Personally, I use Aurora on my non-gaming PC and Bazzite on my gaming PC. They’re both Fedora Atomic derivatives, which really means the system itself “just works”. You can set up Win+V in the shortcuts section of the settings to launch the Clipboard Manager, which I believe is what you’re looking for. As for the VM, use a KVM manager (like
virt-manager). It will have native functionality for all your needs there, though I can’t remember if shared clipboard is bidirectional or not (though that could likely be fixed). I can’t recall if it’s installed by default on either Aurora or Bazzite, but if not then you can just install it from the software store. Most things a normal user would want to install are available in the built-in software store (no going to websites and downloading dangerous exe files), and if something isn’t, then with Aurora or Bazzite, you can either check for an AppImage from the program’s download page (which is kind of like a portable exe in Windows), or layer the package. Layering is generally a last resort, as it can make updating take longer and cause inconsistency across installs, but to do it, you can just look up “how to install [program name] in Fedora” and swap thesudo dnf installforrpm-ostreeinstall.The great thing about the atomic distros I recommended are that they’re generally “just works” distros with all the codecs, drivers, and such installed by default. They’re also very resilient and stable, and if anything breaks, you can select the old version in the GRUB menu on boot to revert back to a known working version of your OS and then just
rpm-ostree rollbackin the terminal. Updates can happen entirely in the background, and while they need a reboot to apply (as would also be required with layering a new package), the boot time is not affected. The update us applied while booted with no disruption to the user, and when it reboots, the OS just switches to the new, updated branch. No “Updating… Please wait” screens. You wouldn’t even notice an update.I tend to recommend atomic distros to new users, as they’re far less prone to breakage, thus causing less frustration. Hope this helps!
I use KDE as my desktop. KDE is installable on any distro, although you probably want a distro with a newer version of it like Fedora or Opensuse. On KDE, these two shortcuts do what you would expect them to do.
Win + V opens up a clipboard manager by default:
I actually like this clipboard manager better than the Windows default clipboard manager, because it lets me search, edit, or star items so they can be found quickly from the “starred only tab”. The amount of items kept is also configurable, and it keeps way more items than the Windows clipboard manager.
Windows + Shift + S opens Spectacle (KDE’s screenshot utility) by default. It has some basic editing features, but one feature about it I like is there is an option to upload the screenshot directly to imgur for easy sharing.
For RDP, I recommend using Remmina to connect to machines via RDP. It supports shared clipboard, but also shared filesystem and some other nice stuff. You can save connections and their options to easily connect again later.
Remmina is a mature program that is available in the repositories of most Linux distros.
Anything will do. Just download a live iso, try it from usb or as vm untill you found what you like. I keep coming back to debian. So solid it’s (almost) boring. I do have both xfce4 and i3 inststalled and choose at login which I want/need at that moment.
In my experience remapping keys is easier on Linux than Windows. I copy and pasted a lot in past roles and unlike my own Linux PC which will allow me to set whatever key combos I like, the Windows comp at work didn’t have any software for this and IT didn’t have anything for me to install. I ended up adding my shortcuts directly to a hardware keyboard with user-modifiable firmware and that made it easier than ever before. Now copy and paste are a single keypress and even some of the weird key combos I could never remember have a simple stand-in. I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t discount hardware solutions because it may be the simplest way.
Any distro will work.
Both KDE and GNOME have super simple key mapping tools to set your Super key combos to whatever you want.
Remmina is probably the best RDP client available for any OS.
