Now that GNOME wants to abandon it.

*turn it from default-on to default-off

It's still a change. GNOME dictates onto users what the developers think the users should use or have. I find that not acceptable.

This can be said about literally any software? And as GP points out, it's not "dictating what you can use or have" - you can turn it back on.

I once watched a co-worker completely bork a customer system by accidentally middle-clicking while moving his mouse after copying an ls -l of /usr/bin (where pretty much everything was a symlink to the real executables in /bin).

Yeah, he shouldn't have been logged in as root, but the point remains that middle-mouse paste can be extremely dangerous and fat-finger-prone.

That problem has been solved by terminals whose readline awaits actual user input (actual enter from the keyboard) even when you paste a command with single line break or a multiline command. Most linux terminals do that nowadays, and it's also great for giving you a chance to review that oneliner you've copied from the browser, which could contain something different than what was shown.

It’s a right pain reverting that on modern desktops.

I love Linux, but the cut and paste situation is really terrible. The middle mouse paste isn't a problem for me--it's that there are two separate "clipboard" buffers, which just causes all sorts of problems.

Having two separate clipboard buffers is a feature I intentionally use.

You and I both.

Except it's not a bug that found use. It's intentional behavior. From https://specifications.freedesktop.org/clipboard/latest/:

> The rationale for this behavior is mostly that [having a unified clipboard] has a lot of problems, namely:

> - inconsistent with Mac/Windows

> - confusingly, selecting anything overwrites the clipboard

> - not efficient with a tool such as xclipboard [(tool that maintains a history of specifically CLIPBOARD; it would be messy to keep a history of all selections)]

> - you should be able to select text, then paste the clipboard over it, but that doesn’t work if the selection and clipboard are the same

> - the Copy menu item is useless and does nothing, which is confusing

> - if you think of PRIMARY as the current selection, Cut doesn’t make any sense since the selection simultaneously disappears and becomes the current selection

The selection buffer is easier to understand if thought about more simply. Middle click to “put my selection here”.

The actual clipboard is a separate feature in my mind.

Yup, both have their uses. If you use a clipboard manager or have the clipboard synchronized between devices/remote desktops/VMs, the primary selection comes in handy for stuff you don't exactly want saved to disk, crossing VM boundaries, or transmitted over the network. I use middle-click pasting primarily for its separate buffer.

You can unify the middle mouse selection and the regular clipboard in KDE if you wish. Personally I find keeping them separate very convenient.

There are a number of DE-independent clipboard managers that can do that as well as other features, like keeping a clipboard history so you can copy in series then paste in series, or having keyboard shortcuts transform the clipboard contents by way of a command, so you can e.g. copy some multi-line text then paste it as a single line joined by spaces.

I use "autocutsel" to synchronize the cut buffer and clipboard in X. Not sure what Wayland might need to do this or if it even has a similar concept.

I love select to copy and middle-click to paste.

https://www.nongnu.org/autocutsel/

Shift+Insert has always been my preferred method of pasting into a terminal after too many mishaps with right-click or middle-click paste.

GNOME is doing something right for a change and fixing a common source of security issues.

If you like it, just keep the behavior enabled.

Never in my life have I heard of this security issue.

> GNOME dictates onto users what the developers think the users should use or have. I find that not acceptable.

Every operating system (or DE) does that. Hell, every piece of software does that. They're all just a bunch of opinions wrapped in a user interface.

Some may provide more opportunities to change the defaults, but those defaults still remain.

Yes, but the problem is the GNOME organization is headed by opinionated morons with zero clue how to design a user interface.

I rather like GNOME, which presumably also makes me a moron.

Or perhaps we're all just people with differing opinions on what constitutes a "good" user interface.

There are people who like Windows too. I also consider them morons.

They're probably referring to gnome's history of controversial opinions that many users don't like, such as:

- "simplifying the UI" by removing many useful features (like systray icons)

- "what makes you think sharpness is a metric?"

- claiming fractional scaling is dumb because "monitors don't have fractional pixels"

- "we know what users want" while ignoring most user feedback

- "we're not copying mac OS" while blatantly doing so

- "consistency is key" then changes entire UI paradigm every release

- "what's the usecase for <insert well-known feature>?"

- intentionally obscuring how to access / in the file picker

And in general just being incredibly tone-deaf and abusive to their own users on the forums. Torvalds has been calling out their "users are idiots and are confused by functionality" stance for over 20 years now.

This is like, the least bad thing GNOME have ever done. Middle-click pasting makes no logical sense and only exists as a holdover from before copy-paste conventions were established. Nobody would design it this way today.

As typical, +3 points, then -4 when Americans come online. Any downvoters want to explain how middle click makes any sense to them?

I would say the issue itself is almost irrelevant... I think it's mainly your dogmatism. Speaking in absolutes as if you always know everything, that there can seemingly only be one right answer and there can be no other valid perspectives or opinions. To me it just screams low emotional intelligence and a lack of critical thinking, humility and empathy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

Sometimes facts are just true. Indeed this is quite often the case. Americans' inability to realize that explains a lot about their country right now. If you believe something I've said is untrue, then you should say why that is. If you can't say why it's untrue, maybe it's not untrue.

defaults matter a lot!

Developers change defaults all the time and make things far worse.

Vim 9.0 default changes required a 6 line vimrc to undo the damage.

Yes, that's the primary reason that made me switch to neovim instead.

GNOME devs really are special. I wonder why.

It is not just GNOME devs. Try to interact with systemd-poettering or I-pwn-glibc-Drepper. For some reason the Red Hat centric guys are troublemakers.

More recently KDE devs also became troublemakers - first David "all must use systemd", then nate "I-can-ask-for-donations-at-will-by-placing-a-trojan-daemon-onto-people-whose-sole-job-is-to-ask-for-donations" (more about this guy here: https://jriddell.org/2025/09/14/adios-chicos-25-years-of-kde...) and of course the "there are no xorg-server users left on KDE, so all must use wayland". Developers became a LOT more like dictators in the last 10 years specifically. This was a change indeed. I am not sure what happened, but things changed. GTK is now also a pure GNOMEY dev-kit. Good luck trying to convince the GTK devs of anything that used to be possible in gtk2 or gtk3 - it is now GNOME only.

I'm pretty scared what userland piece of software will be re-written while ditching backwards compatibility and making the current body of support knowledge worthless. After all, we've replaced the display server (sort of), audio, init and service management, network commands (netplan) if not much more.

My bet would be on a rewrite of CUPS in Rust. Oh, your printer that worked for 20 years is now a useless brick? What a shame, at least now the printing subsystem is secure and blazing fast.

Not even Rust zealots want to touch printing ;)

> My bet would be on a rewrite of CUPS in Rust.

Please, don't give them any ideas.

Well, as Apple has basically abandoned CUPS, and not everyone uses the OpenPrinting fork, things in that space are getting "fun".

Please, printers have never worked, it's a side effect when they do.

https://pointieststick.com/2025/03/10/personal-and-professio... for the sake of completeness here's Nate Graham version of events.

PC mice haven't had three buttons for decades!

Third button has been "hidden" below the mouse wheel for well more than those 10 years, just press the wheel down and you'll hear a mouse button click.

You'll be surprised to know that there are still some mice that don't support that. Admittedly, I've only had that happen once in the last 15 yrs in a budget "gamer" mouse I instantly returned and replaced with a Logitech g903 at the time (though I've switched mice twice since, and both supported it)

And most Linuxes have option for dual click (right and left mouse button) to simulate middle mouse button.

Useful, as the wheel button is usually first to die in cheap mice.

Not useful, because it made it impossible to play Death Stranding on Linux :(

Ironically, Microsoft pioneered the scroll wheel.

popularized, not pioneered.

How so?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Michelman

Remember Xerox PARC, the people that developed the first computer GUI?

https://archive.is/sKLL

> The three button Alto mouse enabled the first bitmapped and overlapping windows display, known as a graphical user interface (GUI). The Alto dates to March of 1973

My dude, my mouse has 5 buttons. No idea what you're talking about here.

I'm down to one. Less is more.

Is that one of those innovative designs with the charging port on the bottom of the mouse?

Sometimes more is more.

It sounds dumb but the battery lasts long and charges quickly, so I think they made the right decision.

They already did that by forcing "AI" into the OS.