I often run emacs in a terminal window. The following is a way to get copy-paste “working” to and from other applications. Note that it requires xsel, “a command-line program for getting and setting the contents of the X selection”. See also http://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2006/10/22/emacs-copypaste-and-x/ ;; https://hugoheden.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/copypaste-with-emacs-in-terminal/ ;; I prefer