It seems like for at least a decade every application/framework has had their own paste buffer, and honestly I’m surprised this isn’t “just working” out of the box by now.
- Open Terminal
- Run pwgen, double click one of the passwords.
- Middle click in Terminal, the copied password pastes just fine.
- Switch back to Chrome, CTRL-V into the password field.
- Realize 5 minutes later when you can’t login with the user you’ve just created, it’s because the content you pasted into the password field was an URL you copied in Chrome 15 minutes ago.
And don’t even get me started on vim/neovim having yet another copy/paste buffer.
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Linux running X11 has 2 clipboards:
- oldschool ( from terminal-only era ) => copy by selecting text (mostly in terminals) and paste using middle mouse click
- more modern new style ( based on graphical interfaces ) => copy by ctrl+c (or ctrl+shift+c in terminals and such) and paste ctrl+v (ctrl+shift+v in terminals …)
Normally both those clipboards work independent as they are handled by 2 different processes, so you can for example copy one text using ctrl+c and copy another text by only selecting second text, then you can paste both, one with middle click, second with ctrl+v
More and more distro have a clipboard managers that have a feature to “sync” both clipboards, but it’s a lot of time disabled because it’s more confusing people and sometimes annoying. Why it’s confusing and disabled by default? Imagine that you selected some text, then did a ctrl+c, you move to some word document, select text, remove it, and want to Paste it. Guess what, the selecting you did to remove text did copy the selection to clipboard overriding what you did have there from ctrl+c.
Most if not all terminal emulators (konsole, gnome-terminal, xterm) support both clipboard styles, old-school select to copy, and new one but because the “ctrl+c” shortcut reserved to stop/interrupt applications they all decide to use ctrl+shift+c to do a copy. And yes, not only terminal emulators use ctrl+shift+c, I did have few encounters on some random apps, but most of the time, if ctrl+c is used for something else, ctrl+shift+c was available.
- Tries to use Windows conventions on Linux, without bothering to learn the differences. A 30 second Google search would suffice.
- Fails.
- Posts a rant blaming Linux for “not working properly”.
I’ve been using Linux since RedHat 4.2, and for a number of years in the early 2000’s as a desktop. Since then it’s mainly been as a server, and I just recently got back into running it as a primary desktop.
The “it’s always been that way” argument is stupid and you should know better.
Sorry for the rough tone, it’s been a long week.
The question is not that it has always been that way. The question is that different systems do things differently and one must take time to learn it.
If I would use an Apple system I’d have to learn how things are done on it. Of course you can always compare different approaches, but take time to understand why the differences exist.
When I use Windows I often miss the middle click copy, but I’m not saying window copy paste is broken for the lack of it.
Again, sorry for being harsh. A vacation is very much overdue for me.
Have you tried
ctrl+shift+cto copy from terminal?Terminal shortcuts to copy and paste are different, because ctrl+<letter> may be a command
Yes, never have this problem thanks to the trusty
ctrl+shift+candctrl+shift+v.I have this problem the other way around, I always try to copy with ctrl shift c, out of muscle memory, but in chrome it opens up the devtools instead
You and me both. The worst is I have to use Teams for work and Ctrl+Shift+C is the shortcut to call the person you’re chatting with.
What I’d like to see is a clipboard history which pastes the content into cursor with just mouse click/enter.
Clipboard indicator might be what you’re looking for, unless I misunderstood your comment
