After Windows 11 made an appearance I decided to give Linux another go with a more open mind. I settled on Kubuntu but I can’t get my head around the whole “middle click paste” thing. For those of you who don’t know, highlighting text will automatically copy it to a clipboard-style buffer. It can then be pasted by pressing the middle mouse button or wheel. I often find myself highlighting text for clarity or as a “this is important” when reading something. So I don’t want that text being unexpectedly pasted into a text field if I’m using autoscroll.
The thing is, I can’t see any way of disabling this globally. It can be done for GNOME applications. I’ve looked around and all I can find is the following (the top two are direct quotes):
- Why would you want to do this?
- It’s fundamental to Unix/X11 so learn to use your computer properly
- Recompile your own instance of Wayland without it
- Disable the middle button completely
- Use a background shell script to intercept it and disable it on the fly
Is that really it?
To be honest, for a system which prides itself on customisation, the inability to properly disable this is kind of putting me off taking it any further.
