this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally pasted random private stuff from that goddamn middle click into WEB PAGES! Things that can read whatever text you type without having to explicitly submit anything. It's a horrible thing for a new user to discover by accident. It's such an unexpected feature to new users, and no one gets told about it, ever. You simply discover it by accident.
This is a good change, not having it on by default.
To all the haters of this idea, god forbid we make Linux less weird by default for people migrating from Windows.
All that said, I have learned to love select-to-copy and middle-click paste. Especially in the terminal.
And that is the exact reason that was given in the gnome merge request. A user being able to accidentally paste a bunch of text they didnt even know they'd copied incredibly design.
This. Only correct comment in the entire thread. Rest are people who probably don't even use computers and have no idea what a mouse is.
Until this article I didn't even know you could middle-click paste.
I've done it countless times by mistake in Discord when trying to scroll through a channel..
Haha same, never thought of it as a problem to be fixed but see no reason to stop having it as the default, Ctrl+Shift+V works same as middle click to paste in terminal.
Yeah, I use that, too. It might differ from DE to DE, but in KDE, there's the normal clipboard, and then there's the one for selections and middle-click. They don't share the same contents by default, but you can enable that.