Middle click paste is a very useful feature for a lot of people, but new linux users are not those people.
I personally switched two years ago, and got several people I know to switch too. Everyone I know who switched (including me) was confused by middle click paste.
It’s a hard to intuitively understand action (took me several months until I understood it took the selection for some reason) that is very easy to trigger accidentally, and that duplicates existing functionality.
The people who like it already know it exists, and could just toggle it on.
Of course, on distros not aimed at beginners, like say, debian, it should remain the default.
Another take: the discussion shows that quite a lot Linux users use this feature because it makes them more productive. If that feature is hidden away new users will probably never find it. Linux is not the same as Windows (which is why people flock to it right now in the first place) and thus has a learning curve. And I think that’s ok. We don’t have to make it more like Windows, people have to learn how to use it.
Honestly don’t know why people are up in arms and even posting about it. They aren’t saying they are removing the capability, just the default. Big whoop.
I’m guessing, those people are worried that it will be removed. It’s already somewhat on the line since Wayland started replacing X11, because individual desktop environments can now decide to implement it or not.
It’s Gnome. They do actually keep removing stuff that they disable by default, because they don’t even offer a GUI to configure these settings.
Yeah, I accidentally posted an early draft of my furry midget vore age regression erotica novel I was working with on a discord channel and I caused the death of several fellow men due to dehydration as such is the magnitude of my writing. I wished these souls didn’t weight on me so harshly but I keep moving forward as progress doesn’t have ethics. A minute of silence for my wankers.
Is this not a thing in Windows? It’s such a wonderful convenience, and I swear I’ve always used it, but I guess I haven’t touched Windows in well over a decade at this point, so I can’t say I remember.
It is very easy to understand.
We should empower new users and show them better ways.
“New users” as you describe them don’t even know that the mouse wheel can be clicked at all. The only thing to be fixed is consistency with Ctrl-C clipboard.
I’ve been using Linux off and on for decades, full time for over a year now, and only now learned this was a thing after I distro hopped to CachyOS and kept accidentally middle clicking on my laptop’s trackpad and getting shit pasted everywhere. I had to look up how to disable it because it was so annoying. I generally only middle click in web browsers for auto scroll and that’s extremely rare.
I’d be happier if they just fix whatever breaks click highlighting in the terminal. I hate that shit and I think it’s accidentally attempting to paste via Ctrl-V that does it so F my habitual ass.
Grimly: “year of the linux desktop”
I hate it. I have it disabled in the kde plasma settings, and it’s still on. It won’t go away. It’s fucking garbage. (Middle click paste, not kde plasma)
It has to be the same everywhere.
I am on opensuse aeon and I don’t care about the distro anymore. Same on atomic fedora.
Fedora can be used by noobs and pros, which setting should it be?
Most users don’t even know that you can click on it because it doesn’t look like a button. Touch screen doesn’t have it.
But it should only be replaced with something more useful.
