Using keyboard shorcuts with the windows key in Linux Mint Mate

I don't think you can do that. What I've done is mapped the Menu key (the one that opens context menus) to open the Mint menu. I don't use that key anyways, and you can always use Shift + F10 to get the same effect.

Then I was able to map key shortcuts with the Windows (Super) key without a problem.

I did almost the same as Bojan suggested. I have Linux Mint 17 Mate.

However, the Mint Menu hotkey is not listed in MATE's Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.

If you right click on the Mint Menu applet, and select Preferences, then on the first tab, you can select another hotkey to replace <Super_L>, or if you just want to remove that hotkey at all, you can press backspace.

This problem was annoying me as well. I never use the Super key for the start menu, anyway, and opening a terminal is much more important to me. I solved the annoyance by opening the following file:

/usr/share/mint-configuration-xfce/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml

It contains the following line:

<property name="Super_L" type="string" value="xfce4-popup-whiskermenu"/>

I changed it as follows:

<property name="&lt;Super&gt;m" type="string" value="xfce4-popup-whiskermenu"/>

And added another line underneath:

<property name="&lt;Super&gt;t" type="string" value="xfce4-terminal"/>

(Don't forget to restart the operating system after making the changes.)

Now I can still open the start menu if I want to via Super+M, but the Super key does not interfere with Super+T anymore. (If you don't need a shortcut for the start menu at all, just remove the entire line.)

Same issue here. I finally solved it. The small tool ksuperkey, which has been developed for KDE, works perfect with other desktops.

In Xfce, I bound whiskermenu to "alt-f1" and put ksuperkey into autostart. Do the same for the application launcher you're using in Mate. The super key will behave as one would expect.