What's cmd? I've only got ctrl, alt, super, and hyper over here. /s

I guess I've also that useless "right click menu" keyboard button that's not even worth repurposing for anything due to the placement making it incredibly awkward to use. I'd be curious to know if anyone here actually uses the ctrl or alt keys that are located on the right.

This is X11 centric but I mapped the largely useless context menu button to the compose key. where it actually gets used.

For those unfamiliar with the compose key it is a superior input mechanism for rare characters that maps a mnemonic sequence to the character in question. you want an ø type compose o /

A tutorial if you do not have a compose key configured, I tend to run a minimal bare bones X11 setup, A more full featured environment may have it's own way of doing it.

map the compose key in ~/.xsession

    xmodmap -e 'keysym Menu = Multi_key'

    include "%L" #include the compose file found in /usr/X11R6/share/X11/locale/<localemapping>/Compose
    <Multi_key> <w> <e> <b> : "" # spiderweb
    <Multi_key> <c> <c> <c> <p> : "\xe2\x98\xad" #symbol representing proletarian solidarity between agricultural and industrial workers

I don't know if the compose system is found any where else but I regard it as one of the better things to come out of the X11 project. A little below select / middle click paste.

> I'd be curious to know if anyone here actually uses the ctrl or alt keys that are located on the right.

You must be located in the US, because the US is probably the only keyboard layout with a right Alt key. All the others have an AltGr key in that position.

I use the right Ctrl key in combination with the arrow, Backspace and Delete keys. Also with Return to enter the same content in multiple cells in Excel.

Many keyboard layouts use the right alt as the AltGr key for additional characters like language-specific letters or currency symbols (or at least many European ones do).

As for the right ctrl, by association with the AltGr, I usually map it as the Compose key.

The "right click menu" keyboard button is surprisingly useful if you ever happen to be in a situation where you need to deal with a GUI app without a mouse.

Although these days, chances are good that some things will not be accessible at all, because many devs these days just don't care to do even the basics like submitting dialogs on Enter properly. Historically, though, Windows at least was very thorough in making sure that everything GUI could be operated entirely from keyboard. Much of that is still there, just increasingly obscure - e.g. few people know that Alt+Space will open the same menu that you can get by clicking the window icon in the title bar (the one with Maximize, Minimize, Move, Size etc). Even fewer know that when you pick Move or Size from that menu, you can use the arrow keys to move and resize the window.

Hmm my Lisp Machine has control, meta, super, and hyper but no alt!

A lot of eu keyboard layouts use right alt as alt-gr for special characters. Because of that right control gets a lot of usage since you're using right alt constantly anyways.

I used to use them back when Ctrl-Alt-Del was something you had to press daily.

Hello there, Mr. I-Only-Have-a-Left-Hand.

I use the right control keys, I use Ctrl+Ins/Del, I use "Context menu" key, when it's available. And hey, I have almost a 30 years of muscle memory for them, so when some another idiot replaces the right Ctrl with F23 (which even can't be remapped by default AND pops up the stupidest menu for selecting what F23 should do) I really what to punch him in the face.

NB: as someone up in the thread mentions, right Ctrl is extremely useful for navigating in the text.