6 ms·
Select middle click not working is a stupid decision from GNOME to disable in 50. You can turn it back on with the tweak tool.
by WD-42 6mo ago
Select middle click not working is a stupid decision from GNOME to disable in 50. You can turn it back on with the tweak tool.
- Gigachad 6mo agoProbably changed to work the same as macos. Not sure if windows does middle click paste.
- NekkoDroid 6mo ago> Not sure if windows does middle click paste. It doesn't. X was the only place I know of where that was a thing.
- kleiba2 6mo ago...and it's a great thing. Turning it off is another one of those GNOME decisions that are only made because the same feature does not exist in MacOS.
- linmob 6mo agoAs a trackpoint user, I am glad it's off by default. Because of scrolling on Thinkpad keyboards (using the middle click), I had to turn that feature of every time, especially while working on longer documents I would otherwise accidentally paste stuff at random places. (It's not just macOS.)
- hdgvhicv 6mo agoI’ve used a thinkpad for 26 years, 18 with Ubuntu. I’ve always had middle click enabled.
- lproven 6mo agoNo way, José. From where I sit I have 5 Thinkpads set up within reach, and I have a few more in other rooms. They are by far my preferred laptop. Most run Ubuntu as their default OS, most have the trackpad disabled because I usually use the trackpoint for everything, and on all of them I use middle-click to paste extensively.
- linmob 6mo agoGlad you're less clumsy than I am. :-) The accidental pasting definitely kept happening to me, likely due to my bad habit of highlighting sections while to focus on them.
- Izkata 6mo agoI'm guessing you have touchpad corners enabled. Usually by default lower-right is 2nd mouse button and upper-right is 3rd mouse button (middle click). I only use the touchpad, but knowing where it is I can avoid it and almost never trigger it accidentally. It can also be disabled without affecting two-finger and three-finger tap, which I do use. (This applies to all laptops, not just Thinkpads)
- lproven 6mo ago> I'm guessing you have touchpad corners enabled. Er, no. As I said: Usually I leave the trackpad disabled. I don't like gestures and multi-finger taps much so I prefer to just turn it off.
- troupo 6mo ago> only made because the same feature does not exist in MacOS. Or in anything that's not X? Speaking personally for me only, I don't think it's a great thing. The <however many> clipboards on Linux is... not really a great thing. I for one never know which of the buffers contain what. And this is compounded by the fact that selection may or may not overwrite what's in one of the buffers, and middle click may or may not paste whatever was in that buffer. Additionally compounded by how inconsistent the behavior is across apps.
- kleiba2 6mo agoSure, de gustibus non est disputandum. I, for one, use the different clipboards concurrently all the time, with "highlight & middle-click" probably being the one I use most often. It's the most convenient for me most of the time: - only two interactions (one drag & one click) - completely mouse-based (no keyboard interaction necessary) - hence only requires one hand (look, ma!)
- troupo 6mo ago> Sure, de gustibus non est disputandum. Bo! Let's fight! And both get banned from HN :)
- NekkoDroid 6mo agoI was never a fan of it. I always turned it off. And now it also freed up middle click for auto scrolling which is actually great, especially when the scrollwheel is somewhat broken. As someone that habitually highlights what they are reading it was generally beyond useless for me. It was actively making me mad when I accidenatally pasted some non-sense because I just highlighted a paragraph before and accidentally inserted it into something.
- notabotiswear 6mo agoTo you it is, plenty of people -including myself- don’t find it so. And considering the ratio of MacOS+Windows desktop users to those of ‘nix (an increasing number of which are new converts), middle clickers are a minority here. But hey! At least they are only flipping defaults, not removing the feature outright, like they did type-ahead search. [Insert angry rant here]
- kleiba2 6mo agoI agree with the point about this being configurable. About your first point, however, keep in mind that "middle click insert" has been the default behavior in X since the 1980s, long before Windows or current generation MacOS's were around. To me, this is such a basic functionality, I would compare it something as fundamental as CTRL-X/C/V for cut/copy/paste on Windows.
- cwillu 6mo agoThat is gnome's standard play: move a feature to a preference (“you can just turn it back on”), remove the preference from the control panel (“you can still turn it back on using ‹whatever conf backend they're using this year›”), and then finally remove the feature (“you could only turn it on by using an unsupported mechanism, and ‹conf backend they used last year› is deprecated anyway”).
- prmoustache 6mo agoI like middle click copy/paste but I really don't mind the change as long as I can still configure it with gnome-tweaks.
- jl6 6mo agoDid they publish some rationale somewhere? It’s a useful feature.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- nine_k 6mo agoNeither Windows nor macOS have it, so it's surprising to new users. If your target market (as in support contracts) is EU public servants, it's sort of understandable.
- scns 6mo agoit's surprising to new users (in a good way, i was happy when i found it) let's remove it.
- Sol- 6mo agoJesus, do the people who work on GNOME even like Linux?
- tuna74 6mo agoMaybe they all use some BSD distro?
- LtWorf 6mo agoIn Icaza's case I think he just always wanted to work for Microsoft. I don't know about the less famous developers though.
- ossusermivami 6mo agoicaza hasn't dev or used gnome for like decades.... and i am not sure why you assume the intent of miguel like that.
- littlecranky67 6mo agoWell he did, in the end until he quit Microsoft (and Linux) and moved to macOS/iOS and Swift development.
- PaoloBarbolini 6mo agoWhy do we still put up with GNOME? I've spent the last 10 years off and on from Linux. Had I used something other than GNOME, I believe my experience would have been better. I've been on KDE for the last 3-4 years and things work so well I could never imagine going back to GNOME.
- XorNot 6mo agoBecause Cinnamon exists and has a delightful commitment to functional minimalism.
- SkiFire13 6mo ago> Why do we still put up with GNOME? Because maybe not all people have the same preferences as you?
- dijit 6mo agoPreferences don't form in a vacuum though. There's a perception that GNOME is the "good environment" which means its decisions get treated as more important than other DEs' when things change: and that's somewhat self-reinforcing. Distro: "The most used DE needs first class support, we should probably bend to it" → Distro: "We should probably make this DE the default since it's so widely used and supported" → User: "I choose the default" → Distro: "The most used DE…" So yes, people have different preferences; but if your preference is GNOME today, it might not be GNOME tomorrow, and "I picked the default" isn't quite the neutral signal it looks like.
- tuna74 6mo agoA desktop/workstation/whatever should have a graphical user interface. If you want another GUI you can choose another distro (like Kubuntu etc).
- dijit 6mo agowhere exactly did I say anything contrary to what you said. Are you implying that GNOME is the only thing that should be considered graphical? That everything else has to be an alternative? That GNOME, by virtue of existing has infinite reprieve to change the definition of user interfaces at their leisure; even if it means breaking muscle memory hundreds of thousands of times over decades. I don’t follow the point of what you said.
- littlecranky67 6mo agoIt is a preference - and not everyones. I always hated middle click paste, middle click is amongst the first thing I remap on my systems to do the macOS "exposé"-style of window rearrangements. Other people will have other preferences.
- sph 6mo agoI suppose you use Super+Middle Click? Not a bad idea, I dislike hot corners, and the "exposé" feature of niri is quite good. I might actually remap it to Super+Middle Click. (I use Super+side mouse buttons to move between workspaces, I hate the keyboard-centric workflow when one hand is always on the mouse)
- littlecranky67 6mo agoI don't use Super. Middle click (Button 3) = expose, Button 4 = workspace to the left, Button 5 = workspace to the right. Requires a good mouse with accessible button 4/5 of course. No key modifier.
- sph 6mo agoWhat about software that uses those buttons? I.e. web browser? (middle click = open link in a tab, side buttons = forward/back history)
- littlecranky67 6mo agoNo software I use, uses these buttons for anything integral by default, neither on Linux nor Mac. And if they do, the OS has precedence. On macOS I use BetterTouchTool for those mapping, you can define exceptions for individual apps.
- giancarlostoro 6mo agoI hate that its somehow different from ctrl v paste, that's what makes me angry more.
- teekert 6mo agoTHANX! I don't know how people live on platforms that don't have this :) As for the negative Gnome feedback (not from you but others) I do like Gnome, it's just enough window manager for me, I like the defaults and I like the touchpad gestures etc. Generally looks and works well for all I do. I always feel swamped by KDE.
- giancarlostoro 6mo agoI just use KDE on arch, though for a little while it was glitching out on me frequently, idk if I've been too busy to notice it recently or if they finally patched it up. I miss KDE 3.5 it felt drastically more stable than KDE today. I've tried other DE's but they get weird if your Distro is not built for them.