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.
This article is dogshit. Its clearly written to make it sound like theyre completely getting rid of it to get people pissed off at GNOME and Mozilla. The GNOME merge request has “by default” in the title, so its pretty damn obvious they’re not getting rid of it completely.
As I explained elsewhere there is no official app to change this setting. Users can hack their gsettings.
Support for middle-paste will slowly but surely bitrot and eventually be removed.
They explicitly mention the plan to add a toggle in gnome settings in the merge request.
You’re skipping a step here, first a decision needs to be made on whether or not the default will change, then and only then can they decide whether it’s worth adding something like a toggle to the mouse settings panel, which would be trivial btw.
Configuration UI can be added regardless of what happens with defaults. Defaults change is not a blocker for exposing configurability. If anything I’d say you got it backwards: Don’t switch long-standing defaults until there is a discoverable and accessible way to change it.
They’re still doing something bad: changing the status quo. They’re turning our system into something different because new users want it to be like another system. Maybe they ought to use that other system instead? Or mac os which is kind of a hybrid concept.
Are we going to have to endure the mess of directories they get to enjoy in windows as well so users don’t feel lost? What other convenience should we forfeit and hide at the bottom of a menu because it frigtens the noobs?
Linux isn’t windows, it’s different, things are different, learn something different, or use something else.
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.
I’ll be the nitpicker and point out that changing the status quo doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing. Every good thing ever has basically been a change from the status quo. 🤷♂️
Well, true, that was probably poorly worded.
Perhaps a bit. But I agree with your sentiment besides that. Hopefully we won’t have “the year of the Linux Desktop” as some sort of hard ambition, where we will reach a point where every OS just conforms and converges to the same paradigms, like we basically have on our phones by now.