Calling it a ‘dumpster fire’ is a bit dramatic.
I think I’d happily describe the multiple clipboard situation in Linux as a dumpster fire…
It’s awkwardly ‘solved’ by clipboard managers merging clipboards but it’s still wonky. Even for somebody who has been using Linux as a desktop for many years I occasionally find myself annoyed by it.
At this point I think I’d prefer “copy” to be an affirmative action rather than something that is done automatically. It makes pasting over existing text much easier.
Yeah the 2 clipboards are a mess.
I actually once locked me out of ALL my accounts because of them.
And the keyboard shortcut for primary clipboard paste (
Shift+Ins) is already gone from gtk.- https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/352 (closed)
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1070518 (open)
- There’s a nice Q/A on stackexchange: “Why does Shift+Insert paste from CLIPBOARD in some applications and PRIMARY in others?”
Middle click paste sucks, I keep accideE&4nry!NAnY6Yfntally activating it in the middle of my documents which is bad when I have st6SFMzZkTR7!b^yuff like passwords copied and don’t notice, so good
KDE and Gnome already have toggles for it, though Gnome’s is in gnome-tweaks because Gnome hates exposed settings.
I’d support unifying behavior between toolkits and apps to provide users with a single point to set their preference, but I use this feature a hundred times a day. I’d also like it to remain the default; *nix desktops should have their own flavor instead of just copying Mac OS or Windows, and middle-click paste has been a part of that flavor for 40 years.
No hunter2 in there, this is fake.
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 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.
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.
Not once in over 20 years of daily Firefox usage have I used this feature.
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.
I never used it, but TIL…
I use this DAILY!
I do too but it’s usually unintentional
HOW? In what manner of mouse using are you accidently clicking the paste button?
Having a mouse button being over-sensitive or being used to another middle clic behavior like windows’ autoscroll toggle will tend to do that. Having a fullscreen software using MMB for something else like panning and failling to fully capture the mouse on the current screen in a multi-monitor setup also.
Two finger scroll on my touchpad and another finger lightly presses it turning it into a middle click paste
That’s interesting. It never does that with my touchpad. I wish it did though.
What desktop environment?
I’m just lost why it’s so hard baked I to 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 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.
Bravo Michael for continuing to farm bullshit drama with clickbait headlines on the most inane topics like “how my DE handles pasting text”
Does Gnome have a proper file picker yet?
You mean “once again”. They had one, but screwed it up. Who the fuck types in the file save dialog expecting it to perform SEARCH?
If that’s not optional, I’d have to leave Firefox for something else.
It is only going to be disabled-by-default
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?
It’s one of those things you either use constantly or not at all. Activating the feature intentionally and having it fail is irritating, but activating it unintentionally because you didn’t know it was there could have serious consequences. I mean, I can even come up with cases where the wrong information being C&P’d accidentally into the wrong Web form could result in someone ending up dead.
Given the difference in stakes, “off by default” makes sense for this feature. I wouldn’t call it a dumpster fire, though—more like a relic of a more innocent time.
