Pretty sure most of you already know this but for those who don’t: you have two clipboards in Linux. One is the traditional clipboard where you copy with control c and paste with control v. The other one is when you highlight text and use the mouse middle click to paste text.
More details here.
Not going to lie, I hate the middle click clipboard and disable it ASAP. I really dislike the idea that it copies things without my explicit permission.
I don’t believe anything is actually copied until you request it to be pasted. The clipboards in Linux mark where the data is, and don’t actually initiate a copy until there’s a destination.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/clipboard
Yes. You can test this by selecting something, closing that window and attempting to paste. It won’t work. Closing the window removes the information about what was highlighted, so there is nothing to paste. If it were to copy upon selection you’d still be able to paste.
It’s one of the things that I hated at first when moving from Windows, but then I got so used to it I just can’t live without it. Whenever I use Windows, I would try to quickly copypaste text using selection, doing so for 5-10 seconds, until I realise this is not a thing on this OS.
Ditto. And sometimes I use both the Ctrl+C and middle-click clipboards at the same time, when I want to copy two chunks of text. Like this:
Windows and KDE Plasma both have CMD + V to show a list of all things that have been copied. So I always just do Ctrl + C, Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V, CMD + V -> down arrow -> enter. Though on KDE Plasma you will need another Ctrl + V to actually do the pasting after you have selected the value to paste, whereas on Windows selecting the value also pastes it. But the workflows are very similar.
Huh, I do not have CMD + V for clipboard contents in Plasma with Klipper. What distro is configuring that?
I am assuming by CMD you mean Superkey. If not, I would like to know. I looked at Klipper shortcuts and didnt find it in there either.
By CMD, I mean the windows key. I am using Opensuse Tumbleweed. I thought I was just using the default clipboard, but I guess I’m not 100% sure.
Well I guess it is configured that way on my EndeavorOS laptop, so I wonder what I need to do to enable it. My desktop has been rolling for 4 years, maybe they added that at some point along the way.
I will give it a look an check it out. Been awhile since I used Suse. Totally cool. Oh and I meant the windows key. A lot of Linux folks call it the super key.
I guess I was using the Mac term for it. I use all three heavily, so they all get mixed up on my head.
I actually like the feature but could you explain how you disabled it? I’ve tried to merge all three clipboards into one a few years ago and couldn’t make it work
KDE has the option to disable middle click paste, so I do that. Out of sight, out of mind
Whenever I use a touchpad without physical buttons, I usually disable the middle button entirely. It’s more of a hammer-to-mosquito solution than what you were asking, but it’s as easy as adding this command to the autostart file (on Xorg):
xinput set-button-map "Name-of-your-Touchpad-goes-here" 1 0 3 4 5 6 7, where “Name-of-your-Touchpad-goes-here” can be found withxinput list --name-only.