I use middle click paste all the time, but the title is misleading and clickbaity. At least on GNOME’s side they’re discussing about disabling it by default, not completely. While this is annoying as long as the setting isn’t going away I’m fine with that and I understand the reasoning behind it.
Reminds me of LWN and the end of the Rust experiment.
“Oh don’t worry, ChatGPT can just type that text in for you when you need it”. /s
next they will remove the copy history?
When was that ever a thing?
It’d be so easy for them to just add “by default” to the end of the title.
Would they kindly discuss using Super+C and Super+V for copy paste instead ? It’s the only thing I miss from macOS.
You can add shortcuts yourself in gnome, no ?
Yes but that doesn’t always translate to every program. But also, I use Plasma anyway x)
Highlight->Middle paste has been my friend for decades now. Using it from SunOS in the 90-s to now has been a great feature. It’s the quickest way to copy and paste while I’m working fast with text or data entry.
I love having both clipboards be functional. The latest rounds of tools that have stopped being as compatible with it has been no end of problems in my workflow. I’ll copy with the keyboard, highlight some text and then paste both clipboards somewhere else.
No, using the keyboard here isn’t as fast, don’t bother making that argument, especially since ctrl-c means different things in different places on Unix style systems. Left hand stays home row while the right is forced to leave for the mouse since it’s a GUI.
I’ve had to deal with many tools that don’t respect keyboard cut/paste as well. Add in that some tools like putty or git bash on windows have ctrl-ins for paste?
Panning in CAD/design is usually click and hold middle or even a two button system (freecad), so trying to take a middle click for that isn’t buying uniformity.
The copy/paste world is already fractured enough. Keep the highlight/middle click working so we can go fast. I might be a dinosaur, but I’m a fast dinosaur.
reading these comments had me wondering if i was the only dinosaur around. lol
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally pasted random private stuff from that goddamn middle click into WEB PAGES! Things that can read whatever text you type without having to explicitly submit anything. It’s a horrible thing for a new user to discover by accident. It’s such an unexpected feature to new users, and no one gets told about it, ever. You simply discover it by accident.
This is a good change, not having it on by default.
To all the haters of this idea, god forbid we make Linux less weird by default for people migrating from Windows.
All that said, I have learned to love select-to-copy and middle-click paste. Especially in the terminal.
Until this article I didn’t even know you could middle-click paste.
I’ve done it countless times by mistake in Discord when trying to scroll through a channel…
Haha same, never thought of it as a problem to be fixed but see no reason to stop having it as the default, Ctrl+Shift+V works same as middle click to paste in terminal.
This. Only correct comment in the entire thread. Rest are people who probably don’t even use computers and have no idea what a mouse is.
But why? It hurts noone to have that enabled.
Post literally describes who and how it hurts. You need to read.
I did read it. I still do t understandthe issues. Most normal people do to my knowledge not even know they can middle click. And on most laptops three finger middle click is usually disabled by default. Having issues with “confusion” is to me a made up problem.
If you’ve never accidentally pressed the mouse wheel while using your mouse you must just not use computers very much, especially not for work
I dont belive that your argument adds much to the discussion.
Sure, if you grew with that feature and use it, it doesn’t hurt you. For others though, this is pain, it fucking hurts to keep accidentally paste stuff all over due to a legacy feature.
I’ve literally used Linux for over 5 years without ever noticing middle click did anything unusual until a colleagues showed me he could magically paste things with the mouse and I had to ask how he did it. Now I use it frequently and love the feature. I just don’t understand how you “keep accidentally paste stuff all over” when I’ve never heard any of my Linux friends and colleges ever mention anything about it and like me they were supprised and happy when I showed them the feature as well.
It will hurt less being disabled
It messes with click to scroll, or just pastes things when all you want is to activate a window or something
Why would you activate widows with middle clicks? I’m fine having the toggle button, I’m not against that. I just dont see the harm in leaving it as paste as default.
Not sure but old habits die hard.
The only times something got pasted with middle click was accidental and then it doesn’t even take what’s in the clipboard, which is also annoying if you’re in the habit of selecting text randomly when you read.
I occasionally use middle mouse paste, but I switched my partner over from Windows recently and they were used to scrolling by holding MMB and dragging which seems to be the default on Windows…
I expected there to be a toggle to turn off middle mouse paste but there just wasn’t. I had to go into multiple different places to disable it and enable autoscroll for all their apps. I ended up installing a hacky tool that would just clear the clipboard whenever MMB was pressed.
If anything can make this process easier, I’m all for it.
Fucking finally
GNOME really seems to be targeting some mythical user who is tech savvy enough to install Linux, is likely running Windows currently, wants their new operating system to feel like MacOS but is also helplessly confused by any settings/customizability or the smallest change in behavior from other operating systems.
I don’t generally see recommendations for new users/less tech savvy to use GNOME anymore since there are plenty of DEs that behave closer to what they’re already used to and it feels like most of the enthusiasts have largely abandoned it already. I just don’t understand who they think this is for. Just baffling decision after baffling decision
I have long found it more useful what the middle mouse button does on Windows (start scrolling) and hope that becomes widely adopted, even outside browsers, on Linux one day too. Good step in that direction.
What? No way. I despise their captive scrolling stuff. Every time I get forced onto a windows system I forget that middle mouse is a weird scrolling mode and end up wandering randomly up and down pages until I realize what happened.
i dont understand why this is a conversation. shouldnt we just have the option to turn it on and off?
The option is there, the news is that GNOME changed the default value.
I might switch away from GNOME if this passes. I’ve lost enough QoL features/UI degradations already with no option to go back.
They only discuss to disable it by default, not removing the functionality.
That’s at least an improvement, I didn’t think GNOME had it in them to add more user-defined options.
It would be fucking GNOME
Please don’t fuck a gnome, that’s very impolite
