It's been so long I don't even remember the first time, I usually use three fingers on the touchpad to paste text from the clipboardIt's something I like and find productive, but its days may be numbered. GNOME, the project behind the most used desktop environment in Linux (although KDE is hot on its heels), and Mozilla, the company that develops Firefox, are considering discontinuing support for this very useful gesture.
Although they are debating it at the same time, each project has its own reasons. GNOME says it's a thing of the past, an "x11ism", a function that makes no sense in the present, and this is explained in a proposal in your GitLabAs I will explain later, there are those who think there is something more, even going so far as to consider political and ideological issues that I very little like to talk about.
GNOME would remove it by default, but it could be reactivated.
Jordan Petridis explains:
«This is an x11ism, originally an xsetting, which frequently leads to unexpected behavior when people press the middle mouse button. The complete lack of any indication that this will happen is nothing short of chaotic. People who are familiar with this functionality and truly appreciate it can easily override this setting.«.
What they don't explain, and what I've read on social media, is that they also There may be political or ideological motivations.Without wanting to delve too deeply into this, it's known that GNOME is left-leaning, even resorting to using unsavory labels against those who think differently, and is now in charge of X11. XLibreThis person leans more to the right, a conservative who claims things like their job is free of DEI policies (the acronym used in the US to refer to inclusion policies). Some users believe this might be relevant, but everyone is free to draw their own conclusions.
On the other hand, GNOME does not suggest removing the option completely. It can be re-enabled using this command:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste true
However, this whole debate is happening right now and they could end up leaving things as they are.
The Firefox perspective
Firefox is considering the same issue. Mozilla believes that false positives occur frequently, meaning that the feature is activated without the user's consent.
«This is a little-known feature and behavior that often confuses users when they press the middle mouse button without knowing its function. Most of the time it's also activated accidentally, and it's very strange that the clipboard contents are inserted under these circumstances. Furthermore, the function is not at all discoverable, and in fact, even the Freedesktop wiki refers to the entire 'PRIMARY' selection as an 'Easter egg'.'».
This is something I understand, but I don't agree with it as someone who uses this gesture a lot. I understand that when something happens unexpectedly it's confusing, but you can also understand why it happened and learn to take advantage of it. For me, it's a step backward, because having to press Ctrl+V or right-click and then search for the option seems slower and less intuitive.
Like GNOME, Mozilla wouldn't remove the option entirely either. They could add an option in the settings to restore the behavior.
It won't affect you if you use Chromium and other desktop environments.
I like that gesture. I confess I'm not thrilled about them removing it, but I usually use Vivaldi (Chromium) and KDE, so I won't be affected if both projects move forward. On the other hand, it's a small price to pay if they allow me to revert to the behavior I've been using. at least The last ten years. I don't much like change, especially if it takes away something I take for granted. We'll see how this all ends.