> On Debian it changes to visual mode.

If you put this in your .vimrc, it should allow you to paste from the system clipboard by pressing space-p:

    let g:mapleader = "\<Space>"
    nmap <leader>p "*p
    vmap <leader>p "*p

(Or use `"*p` or `"+p`, not including the backticks.)

That will only work if the xterm_clipboard feature is enabled at compile time with vim.

Edit:

s/clipbaord/clipboard/

Oh, I'm not sure how it works on regular Debian. I'm using Ubuntu and it works out of the box here. I'm using neovim now, but it works with regular vim from the package manager too.

You can try running:

    :version

within vim to see what compile time features are enabled or disabled. If the list says +xterm_clipboard, then that feature is enabled.

In my experience, terminal vim doesn't have that feature enabled, but gvim does.

I've always used the + register to copy or paste text in vim (if X11 is enabled). Otherwise, I'll use xclip to handle interfacing with the clipboard.

    :w !xclip -selection clipboard

or

    :r !xclip -o -selection clipboard

Hmm. I don't think that works over ssh?

You may have to use the -display parameter though the man page for xclip says that it will use the value of $DISPLAY by default. You will also need to enable X11 forwarding over ssh with the -X parameter or with the ForwardX11 option in the ssh config file.

This has nothing to do with what distro you are using, except perhaps what termcap information it has. If vim detects that the terminal can support mouse input, then it will enable mouse features. If not, vim does not get control over mouse input and your terminal provides default mouse behavior (right-click paste). You can disable mouse features with the command ":set mouse -=a". If you're pasting into vim from a terminal, you may also be interested in the "set paste" command.

That seems unrelated to vim. Doesn't it depend on your terminal if right click will paste? Try Shift right click and see if it pastes like you expect.

But it works fine in Ubuntu. I am SSHing into both and they behave differntly.

This is a recent misfeature. The solution is set mouse=""

Thanks!

I use Vim on Debian Testing, and right-click paste works fine on Gnome Terminal and Konsole, but does visual mode like you find in Xterm or UXterm.