Looking for a distro that best suits my needs

2026-05-27 19:04 UTC

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.

Replies (6)

@just_another_person@lemmy.world 2026-05-27 19:07

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.

Open ##2911104
@moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 2026-05-27 20:23

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, which is 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.

Open ##2912251
@AcornTickler@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-27 21:09

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.

Open ##2912966
@Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 2026-05-27 23:12

You can change the shortcuts on most desktops. At least I know you can on KDE and Cinnamon.

Open ##2914604
@Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-28 04:51

As others have said, any distro with KDE Plasma. If you care about age verification then steer clear of Red Hat associated distros like Fedora. Mint is also straightforward.

Open ##2926169
@Freakazoid@lemmy.ml 2026-06-01 19:14

KDE is the way to go, it works great and is highly customizable to your liking. As for a distro, it’s a little more difficult. I, for instance, have no issues with CachyOS, but there might be better alternatives I don’t know. Maybe others know some great distros. What you can do, however, is set up a VM to try out a couple of KDE distros.

Open ##3029490