TIL why that exists and how it works after using Linux for five years. I always wondered why someone put a function like pasting but not also copying text on the mouse and never realised you just have to select it since apparently there is a second clipboard. I wouldn’t miss it but it also wasn’t that big of a problem.
I like using this on my desktop, but it’s way too easy to trigger this by accident on a laptop, so I disable it on there.
For me it’his is one of the most useful features of Linux desktops and one of the main reasons I feel lost when I have to use Windows.
You won’t lose it. They’ll just turn it off by default for new users.
And then they’ll remove the feature citing telemetry.
And soon new users will never know, as each great Linux feature becomes hidden until the default desktop is a awful as all the rest.
As much as new windows users don’t know about ctrl+c, alt+f4, win+d… Those who don’t care won’t learn, those who do, will, it’s as simple as that.
They won’t though, because they will never know.
I am not a fan of dumbing everything down and hiding all the good stuff.
Is there a big popup at startup with windows that I somehow missed with all the shortcuts? Or did linux became sudenly less documented overnight? Why wouldn’t they know? Why do you think that users magicaly knows about shortcuts almost never referenced anywhere on windows but wouldn’t know about one sparking a debate among linux users with a toggle in settings directly referencing it?
I’ve used Linux for five years now and always wondered who had the idea to put paste on the middle mouse button and thought it was just some obscure convention from the past since it didn’t even paste what was in my clipboard. I never figured out that it was a different kind of paste where you just select text since it is never explained anywhere. I’d rather have new users not be put off by strange unexplained behavior.
Strange and unexpected?
When it doesn’t that is strange and unexpected. It’s relative.
This has been the Unix standard for 30 years implemented at MIT if I remember right.
Maybe a first use, explain, ask toggle. Instead of having to opt in.
They keep ruining Linux by dumbing it down!
Next thing you know we will be catering to mac users and all mouse buttons will do nothing.
Urgh, I use it at least 300 times a day.
Same, and I have done so since the mid-90’s. It’s muscle memory at this point.
never even knew that was a thing until a couple months ago, found it by accident. for 15-ish years I’ve just used a programmable mouse button for paste. still don’t know what i should do with that button now since middle click can paste.
Welcome to the future! … Or the past, not sure, but welcome.
From the other thread it seems it’ll just be disabled by default, and enableable if wanted
Yeah, the title of this post seems to make that fairly clear. Still annoying though.
Maybe GNOME and Mozilla will consider a separate download/package where it is enabled by default, like gnome-desktop-middle-click-to-paste-enabled :D
From the other thread it seems it’ll just be disabled by default, and enableable if wanted
Sure but youre probably aware that the vast majority of users dont, and for those users its a usability issue.
If you’re referring to touch screen users, then I don’t see how not having copy/pasting work when you plug in a mouse benefits them normally when they don’t have mice plugged in.
I can live with this one, as long as they let us pick the function
The default paste action is pretty much the only thing preventing anyone from picking a different function for the button. That’s the the biggest reason for reversing the default behaviour.
I never used it, but TIL…
If that’s not optional, I’d have to leave Firefox for something else.
It is only going to be disabled-by-default
I suppose they are just going to make the AI assistant do all the copy pasting now, right. Burn the house down.
Well, I guess I’d have to use a fork of… oh, wait a second, I’ve already been alternating between Pale Moon, SeaMonkey, LibreWolf, and Firefox along with Tor and Links.
I just would be using less of Firefox and more of LibreWolf. And when Ladybird is ready, I’ll use that and dillo.
Or you could change the preference to enable the feature again.
Except Ladybird is ran by a right wing guy 😞
I’d suggest looking at Servo or old KHTML if you want a true alternative
I’m still looking forward to a new browser engine, separate from Chrome and Gecko. The politics can be debated later, but we need something to break the Google stranglehold. Let’s just be real about this, KHTML, Dillo, Links, and Goanna aren’t doing it. Opera & Vivaldi aren’t going to resurrect Presto.
So what then, other than Ladybird?
Waterfox?
Waterfox is Gecko. I still agree with the comment that mentions it is written by a right-winger. I rather root for Servo, especially because Ladybird is just another web engine written C. Memory safety vulnerabilities are the largest represented class of vulnerabilities discovered every year. Servo being fully written in Rust is a good thing for its security, as long as they also design a strong sandboxing/isolation strategy on all OS platforms.
You do you, that’s fine with me. Waterfox is still an option for other people to consider when they’re looking for an alternative. Like I would consider any new option that presents itself to me: I’m not married to my browser, at least in my eyes it is merely a tool :)
I tried Waterfox and didnt really get it? Why use it over for example Zen or Librewolf? It just seemed way to close to Firefox but like with a couple of preinstalled extensions. Idk, just wasn’t for me.
My browser(s) is just a tool. I use many browsers for different things. I wish there were good alternatives to the main browser engines (Gecko, Blink, WebKit), but I am fine with just using good derivative browsers like Librewolf, Mullvad, Cromite, etc.
servo?
Ill be very happy when that day comes. Its one of the first things I need to search for how to disable every time i setup a new machine. To me, middle click has always been panning a canvas, and rectangle selecting text in editors. Its always super jarring having it paste text on new gnome machines
wait where does that get overridden? its going back a few years but when I was trying blender I used middle click paste and I don’t think I had any issues with it affecting whatever middle click does by default in blender
Not once in over 20 years of daily Firefox usage have I used this feature.
I’m just lost why it’s so hard baked into x11 instead of configurable. I don’t want middle click to paste my selections. Yes I know x11 has some history and that it’s a feature, I do not like that feature. I will never like that feature. I want to copy manually and paste manually.
I don’t want my selections to be captured in a buffer.
I like it, it’s especially useful in a tty(tho many distros don’t have it by default)
Yes, please. Lets dumb down userinterfaces more. I think the right mouse button should go away next, people can’t rightclick on touchscreens anyway, and many are confused by the extra button.
/s. so many /s. thank good it’s open source, if they ever remove the setting to turn it back on, i can just put the code back in.
TIL: middle click is paste?
the middle click is “paste selection” not “paste clipboard”. those are 2 different things under *nix.
I personally use this constantly because you need the funtionality to quickly copy some text somewhere so often, it makes much more sense to not have to do: Select text, ctrl-c, move mouse, click text field, ctrl-v. much nicer to just: select text, move mouse, press middle button.
oh that’s good
Thanks for the explanation. Actually a really nice feature.
As someone who likes the middle-click to do mouse relative scrolling, I would be OK with this being configurable on a per-application level.
I don’t think it really makes sense as a “standard”. Blender will never use middle click as paste, for example.
Middle click to paste the X PRIMARY selection predates Blender.
Yes, I do know how old Blender is.
Right,
But just because it was a standard doesn’t mean it made sense as a standard. So when 99% of applications don’t care to adopt the standard, it really only makes sense to let the application space decide what to do with middle click and to fall back on the user’s system configuration if it’s unspecified (which can still be paste if you want it to be imo)
If 99% of applications that run on *nix desktops didn’t want to accept middle-click to paste text where that’s an operation that makes sense, I would agree with you. I do not believe that to be the case.
On the one hand, I’m all for having it configurable per app. But there should also be a global default, so that one doesn’t need to set it for each program. The current proposal sounds as if I would need to activate it once in the compositor (Gnome) and then separately in Firefox. It should probably be centrally handled by the compositor (not sure if this is possible, don’t know how primary selection works on Wayland).
