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GNOME and Mozilla Discuss Proposal to Disable Middle Mouse Paste on Linux (linuxiac.com)

submitted 5 days ago by cm0002@ttrpg.network to c/linux@programming.dev

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Some projects keep surprising me with their “solutions,” and this is one of those cases. A proposal under review by developers from GNOME and Mozilla could change how middle-mouse-button paste behaves on Linux and other Unix-like systems.

The discussions, visible in Mozilla’s Phabricator revision D277804 and a linked GNOME gsettings-desktop-schemas merge request, focus on disabling the traditional primary selection paste by default.

Mozilla proposes changing the default behavior of the Firefox browser on Unix builds so that pressing the middle mouse button no longer pastes text by default. The author of the revision frames the current behavior as a source of confusion and accidental pastes, especially when users press the middle button without expecting the clipboard contents to be inserted into text fields.

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[–] priapus@piefed.social 18 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Idk how you could look at GNOME and say its trying to act more like Windows. They have their own particular idea of what a desktop should be, and that might not include middle mouse pasting. Defaults shouldnt stay the default just because they've always been. Devs should be able to have discussions about changing things without people accusing them of trying to destroy Linux.

Edit: I also want to point out that a huge number of Linux users dont even know this is a feature (some of which you can see in this thread). This change will add an entry in the settings for it, which very well might lead to MORE people using it. I think disabled is the correct default for something as potentially dangerous as dumping your most recently highlighted text.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 1 day ago

We didn't have scroll wheels back when I first used middle button paste. Scroll wheels make it less good, as too many are too easy to click while scrolling