Hot take: good riddance.
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Hot take: good riddance. I dislike the middle click thing. Trips me up all the time as someone who accidentally clicks it when scrolling.
I think the right move is to make this (undoubtedly useful to some) behavior opt-in, not opt-out.
A lot of the gripes I see are just people being mad because GNOME makes choices they don't like. I don't understand why people write like this about GNOME, if you don't like it don't use it, your emotions make you look petty, etc etc.
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/07/gnome_middle_click_paste/
@vkc I use that all the time, heck I just use in the last 4 minutes. This will really irk me to no end and I will need to undo decades of muscle memory!
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@vkc This is unfortunately expected from Liam Proven, same guy who gave us an "amazing" article lying that KDE/GNOME/Wayland developers, as a whole, do not care about accessibility, whos whole output to the Linux community has been shitty ignorant article after shitty ignorant article
He is, in the nicest way possible, a hack writer and one of those "anti-DEI" assholes, But what do I know, im just one of those evil GNOME devs making linux evil and woke for my own profit
@zoeyTheWitch don't forget about the blatant ageism
> As we have said before, we suspect this disconnect between younger, keener developers who don't know or care about late 20th century user interface standards or accessibility concerns, but who strongly want to junk what they perceive as legacy baggage, are behind the moves to deprecate and remove X11
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/xlibre_new_xorg_fork/
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@proficiency @vkc All of this is lies and additionally it is personal attacks and harassment.
1. Criticism is good, right, and necessary.
2. Petridis has personal animus against me because I criticise his baby.
3. I have no grudges against anyone in FOSS.
4. I have an active GitHub account under my own name with 1 project of my own and contributions going back over a decade.You are attacking me. This is ad hominem and you are telling lies about me.
@lproven @vkc you being a yellow journalist is not a lie, your rag of an article proves that not only to me but everyone.
That's a criticism, you being a yellow journalist.
Petridis act like a baby? Sure, but so do you when confronted with criticism, the difference is that Petridis contributed more in a month to FOSS than you did in decades.
Criticism: you're a yellow journalist and the only times the register made a headline was when you made a trash article.
Ad hominem: you're balding.
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@lproven @vkc you being a yellow journalist is not a lie, your rag of an article proves that not only to me but everyone.
That's a criticism, you being a yellow journalist.
Petridis act like a baby? Sure, but so do you when confronted with criticism, the difference is that Petridis contributed more in a month to FOSS than you did in decades.
Criticism: you're a yellow journalist and the only times the register made a headline was when you made a trash article.
Ad hominem: you're balding.
@lproven @vkc this would be my Proven-esque 'the register' headline for this event:
1. "The Register contributor creates an article for Clicks and Engagement, not Journalism"
Or
2. "Opinion is now News and therefore Journalism, seemingly said by The Register Contributor".
Or.
3. "The bad thing said about me is slander and mean not criticism, also this is why GNOME developers would push a kid to a lake".
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Hot take: good riddance. I dislike the middle click thing. Trips me up all the time as someone who accidentally clicks it when scrolling.
I think the right move is to make this (undoubtedly useful to some) behavior opt-in, not opt-out.
A lot of the gripes I see are just people being mad because GNOME makes choices they don't like. I don't understand why people write like this about GNOME, if you don't like it don't use it, your emotions make you look petty, etc etc.
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/07/gnome_middle_click_paste/
@vkc Opt-In is just what they are proposing https://mastodon.neilzone.co.uk/@neil/115855171822312244 According to this post https://floss.social/@felipeborges/115855208249001716 it’s probably getting a option in the settings as well. So yes, I think that’s exactly the right move for a majority of the users. Even if it’s *not* getting dedicated option, for those who need/want it, there will always be GNOME tweaks or the command line.
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The way the article is written. The way the comments talk about it.
Why do people make it sound like GNOME is some sort of secret cabal of Linux haters?
It's a freaking desktop environment, they have every right to build it however they want, and you have every right to use something different. There's zero reason to get emotionally charged about it.
@vkc Its weird people getting really angry at random choices. Being frustrated is okay, that's a human emotion people are allowed to feel, but don't take it out on others. GNOME's unwaivering commitment to ensuring a consistent UX vision is what has made it so popular. If somebody doesn't like GNOME, there's tons of other options. That's the beauty of Linux, there's something for everyone
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@rappscal I tend to agree, put it in the settings app, *and* I'd argue that the best behavior would be to only disable it on fresh installs, not change it on an upgrade (I don't know how feasible that is, I'm not a GNOME dev).
@vkc @rappscal There's already an official GUI app for it, alongside other obscure things like "focus follows mouse" for window management etc.: https://mastodon.social/@nekohayo/115871263647122444
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@syllopsium @peterrenshaw @aj It's been really interesting to see all these different experiences.
Personally, I switched to GNOME 3 in 2016 after using other DEs since 1999; I've written a lot of XConfigs and calculated modelines by hand. I didn't love GNOME, but it worked well and I felt that it was the most polished experience available.
When Wayland became available, I eagerly adopted it. Where my HiDPI displays were basically a slideshow under X11, they were smooth as butter under GNOME and Wayland, and all my various docks and monitors were more or less plug-and-play.
There were rough edges (figuratively, the main problem was actually blurry X11 apps, LOL), but I've been watching them go away with each release as Wayland features and awareness percolate into toolkits and apps.
So like, I guess I just wanted to be the voice with a different experience. I switched to Wayland in 2018 and never looked back, and I really like GNOME now. I miss my wacky themes. I still occasionally encounter mild annoyances. I still have a few apps that need a little prodding with environment variables or runtime options to look right,. But overall, I'm a happy camper flinging pretty and crisp windows around between screens with different DPIs, and I'm quite comfy in my mostly-GTK+ world.
@DarcMoughty @syllopsium @peterrenshaw @aj This matches my experience pretty closely since around 2018. I really appreciate the strides the Wayland devs have made. I'm amazed by how well Xwayland works. Meanwhile, GNOME feels mature and stable, and stays out of my way. I run a half-dozen gnome-extensions which I hope don't die on the vine, including a couple just for fun (eg "Burn My Windows"), but otherwise don't feel the need to customize it.
I'm also impressed with System76's Cosmic. I haven't tried any other DE in the last ten years that's more likely to supplant GNOME on my desk, but it's not quite mature enough for me yet (especially rough edges in handling Citrix workspace windows).
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@vkc @rappscal There's already an official GUI app for it, alongside other obscure things like "focus follows mouse" for window management etc.: https://mastodon.social/@nekohayo/115871263647122444
@nekohayo @vkc I'm thinking of the type of person who's using the feature for productivity, and finds themselves stuck after an upgrade - for them it's a big breaking change, and they'd presumably go looking in the gnome control center. Having to search and discover an extra app is just an aggravating extra step. But hey maybe they're such a small minority it doesn't warrant a major setting. Situation where some usage telemetry would be helpful
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Hot take: good riddance. I dislike the middle click thing. Trips me up all the time as someone who accidentally clicks it when scrolling.
I think the right move is to make this (undoubtedly useful to some) behavior opt-in, not opt-out.
A lot of the gripes I see are just people being mad because GNOME makes choices they don't like. I don't understand why people write like this about GNOME, if you don't like it don't use it, your emotions make you look petty, etc etc.
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/07/gnome_middle_click_paste/
@vkc Meanwhile, here in KDE land: *crickets*
Yeah because here middle click is whatever the fuck you want, the correct answer to the question, what should middle click do? -
@vkc Meanwhile, here in KDE land: *crickets*
Yeah because here middle click is whatever the fuck you want, the correct answer to the question, what should middle click do?@VampirePenguin my read on the proposal is this would be an option, which defaults to "off" and can be turned on by the user. IMO that's a reasonable proposal.
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if you don't like it don't use it
You can like something as a whole and dislike aspects of it. And isn't this the case with a lot of things in life? If I stopped using something over disliking just a few parts of it, I wouldn't be able to use anything at all because nothing will ever be a 100% fit.@volpeon OK so I don't literally mean "quit using GNOME if you dislike one or two things", I mean "rather than bring vitriol into a conversation, consider investing that time and energy in a new tool".
I often say "if you don't like it, don't use it" as a shorthand because we're blessed for choice here in the Linux ecosystem, unlike other desktop computing platforms.
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@glent "its role in the failure of desktop Linux"
That's a GIGANTIC assumption. And is insulting to the hard working people who work on GNOME, many of whom had nothing to do with those so-called "insular design choices".
It's open source, you can't force a team to do things your way. GNOME's foundation led to wonderful projects like Cinnamon, and I'd argue that the diversification has been a strength.
IMO it's all needless harping on folks who have different opinions.
so-called "insular design choices"
I mean, didn't they preemptively locked the discussion thread to just developers and insta-closed (and threatened to ban folks creating) other form topics about it trying to get some user feedback on the record?
I agree with your points that gnome gets to do whatever gnome wants, and maybe folks on the internet could try chilling out once in a while; but that said: "insular" is just a straight-up accurate way to describe gnome's process here if Brodie's reporting on the situation was accurate.
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@vkc@linuxmom.net @volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip definitely. i like GNOME, but i wish they'd allow for slightly more customization out of the box (although i get why they don't)
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Anyway, if you like GNOME and their design concepts, you're awesome and totally a valid user of Linux.
Sick of the absurd nonsense that says otherwise.
@vkc I'll leave this also here
https://mstdn.social/@fabiscafe/115848147812611839 -
@vkc I love the middle click, I've been using it for about 26 years, and I think its one of my favourite features. I'll be annoyed if it goes away.
I'm totally ok with making it optional...
@DiogoConstantino @vkc it is optional as much it is now. Just the default changes.
And ye I totally agree. One of reasons why i cannot use Windows, though surprised there is no third party thingee.
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@DiogoConstantino @vkc it is optional as much it is now. Just the default changes.
And ye I totally agree. One of reasons why i cannot use Windows, though surprised there is no third party thingee.
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In this period, in this timeline, at this moment, maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't talk about *desktop environment design disagreements* like they're causing deep emotional harm?
@vkc they are causing deep emotional harm, but we’re not dealing with mature, well-adjusted adults here. We’re dealing with Linux zealots.
I like the highlight and middle-click paste. It gives me a second, and faster, clipboard.
I can see how it would be frustrating for new users and those without a suitably firm actuator on their rodent.
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Hot take: good riddance. I dislike the middle click thing. Trips me up all the time as someone who accidentally clicks it when scrolling.
I think the right move is to make this (undoubtedly useful to some) behavior opt-in, not opt-out.
A lot of the gripes I see are just people being mad because GNOME makes choices they don't like. I don't understand why people write like this about GNOME, if you don't like it don't use it, your emotions make you look petty, etc etc.
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/07/gnome_middle_click_paste/
@vkc I’m glad middle click is getting turned off by default too.
My first experience with Linux was installing it on a Mac, connecting my Magic Mouse, then trying to work out why it was randomly pasting my clipboard all over the place instead of clicking normally.
I eventually worked out that Linux thought magic mice should have a third, mystery button in the middle which pastes. Not a good first user experience - wasn’t familiar or comfortable behaviour.
Hopefully this helps new users.
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Hot take: good riddance. I dislike the middle click thing. Trips me up all the time as someone who accidentally clicks it when scrolling.
I think the right move is to make this (undoubtedly useful to some) behavior opt-in, not opt-out.
A lot of the gripes I see are just people being mad because GNOME makes choices they don't like. I don't understand why people write like this about GNOME, if you don't like it don't use it, your emotions make you look petty, etc etc.
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/07/gnome_middle_click_paste/
@vkc to turn this comment over, have you ever questioned the mouse design? What is the purpose of the middle button now? It's a waste of a switch ? p.s. I've been using middle paste since I moved to Linux (~1999) it's way faster than alternatives as long as your mouse isn't physical difficult. I chose my mouse carefully for that reason. Now, the feature is not really gone, it's just disabled. There is a thing called gnome tweaks, you could disable it for a while, now you can enable it instead.
