Another case of where because the better system is suppressed on the more common environment, We are unable to advance the desktop metaphor.
If I am fair I think lack of middle click paste is the main reason I don't enjoy using windows much.
I think it's great that there are 2 ways to move things around, but it does help a lot to be very clear on how both of them work, and some apps do things a bit differently too (eg Ctrl+C in Houdini can be followed by mmb in a terminal, which is a bit unusual, but ok once understood)
Emacs may use the term "yank buffer" globally. vim does not: in vim, they are simply called "buffers". There is a command called "yank" because it is bound by default to "y" but this command is not the only way to place text into a buffer.
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-the-vi/9780596...
In X11, the text goes into the "[Primary] Selection" or the Cut Buffer[s].
https://www.xfree86.org/current/xcutsel.1.html
CUT_BUFFER0 is the default, and obviously there can be more with higher numbers. But when you're pressing the middle mouse button, you're typically pasting the PRIMARY selection. There has never, ever been usage of "yank" in X11 documentation.
donnachangstein•9mo ago
The Mac had this figured out in 1984. Linux still struggles in 2025.
mock-possum•9mo ago
cyclotron3k•9mo ago
MacOS neatly avoids this issue with the command key, but I'm not sure what happens in Windows.
mystified5016•9mo ago
The problem is mainly that Linux has two clipboards running simultaneously, with slightly different behaviors.
In reality, the clipboard works fine. There are some gotchas, but for everyday use it's perfectly fine. The opinion expressed by parent comment is, uh, unconventional. I've never heard this take before. Most people consider Linux clipboards an annoyance that we should fix someday, it's not a showstopper by any means (for average users)
crote•9mo ago
Text-wise the only thing I can think of where clipboards don't Just Work is indeed terminals, but I hardly consider that an issue in practice. Either it's a trivial session and I'll happily right-click to paste, or I'm in tmux and using lead key prefixes for shortcuts already.
Cross-app rich media copy/paste does have a habit of being a bit buggy from time to time, though...
extraduder_ire•9mo ago
rixed•9mo ago
cyclotron3k•9mo ago
Put another way, I strongly disagree that the clipboard is the main obstacle. (And fwiw, Linux has been my main OS for decades)