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 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...
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@vkc not when you have muscle memory going back to the 1980s with middle click
not when the distro(s) you like have it as the default desktop
not when the other desktops are just a heap of no
Gnome tried to get rid of icons on the desktop a few years ago. User pressure brought them back (admittedly through some pretty foul shell hacks)
@scruss@xoxo.zone @vkc@linuxmom.net
Gnome tried to get rid of icons on the desktop a few years ago. User pressure brought them back (admittedly through some pretty foul shell hacks)
That happened with release of GNOME 3, in 2011 and GNOME never brought them back.
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There is a vested interest by numerous groups within the free and open source community to take Linux in a direction that not everyone will agree with. GNOME happens to be one such group and tends to catch a lot of flak due to their unwillingness to compromise on their principles. Something that has at times caused complications in the projects they collaborate on such as Wayland.
Ultimately, we have a difference in opinion when it comes to communities and their responsibility. I believe that a community has a responsibility to tend to the needs and interests of the people from which it consists. As a YouTuber for example, you would be nothing without your audience and as such you may have a vested interest to appease them.
GNOME is held accountable only to the developers and people within their foundation and not the community. This creates a disconnect where people feel they are being ignored. When the users of your software make that discontent known and you continue to ignore it rather than address the issue, it festers resentment. That resentment builds up into the sentiment that some people have towards GNOME today.
Sure, they can always just use COSMIC which has some feature parity to GNOME. But that isn't the point. In order to maintain a healthy community, some concessions are necessary and the cause and effect of GNOME refusing to do so is the sentiment people hold towards them.
@vkc@linuxmom.net@Saorsa @vkc it's wrong to assume that *everybody* agrees on most things, or even on most things. This was never the case, and it will never be, and it's ok, and the big advantage, is that besides having a lot of optionsm we have mostly Free Software the have the power to fork. Those who don't like this, don't Like Free Software.
It's ok for GNOME to do whatever GNOME wants to do, that's called freedom. I say this and I don't always agree with them, and I use GNOME since I use Linux (decades)
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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 they barely survived the malicious removal of init scripts by the Axis of Systemd, only to have their masculinity threatened by the Gnomerati making them toggle a setting in a DE they're not even using. It's a tough life /s
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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 Ugh! I'm really sick of that 2010s Buzzfeed rage-bait article style.
If folks like the design choices Gnome makes, then great. Use Gnome!
If people don't like Gnome, then it's not like there isn't a range of mature alternatives out there like Cinnamon, MATE, and XFCE.
Heck, you can have a great desktop experience using the KDE apps and Plasma these days if you don't like Gnome's decisions.
And is Gnome's design choices really the worst thing going on in the world right now? Really?!
Like, is it even in the top 1000 worst things happening right now? -
@vkc Agreed. Although I wish wayland actually cared about accessibility
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The combination of "newlines in pasted text will trigger messages sending in some chat clients" and "the middle mouse button is millimeters away from the spacebar on some laptops" is awful behaviour. I have had mortifying accidents because of it, where multiline text automatically sent to people I was speaking with- because I have human motor skills and hit the middle mouse button by accident.
I admit it *can* be useful, I guess... but it's behaviour I would happily get rid of.
@mouseless @vkc I love the middle click, but I would be happy if people who don't could disable it.
I think mouse buttons being millimetre away from space bar is a bad computer design.
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@emi @vkc No, Wayland neeeds to care too, not just DEs. Right now, global keyboard access and other things which assistive technology would require is all over the place and DEs are allowed to do their own thing. Those kinds of features should be a part of the core Wayland specification. Accessibility should never be a third-class citizen. And the accessibility landscape is already fragmented enough. We don't need Wayland adding to it
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@lxak@goblin.technology @vkc@linuxmom.net Why extension? There are other ways to do it
@tragivictoria
I mean to agree with @vkc FOSS users don't need to overreact to dev decisions, because the community can change the software to their liking. Extensions are just a for-instance for how these changes are shared -
@vkc I agree with all said. Honestly, I haven't used the middle-click paste **on purpose** a single time in my whole life.
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@vkc Ugh! I'm really sick of that 2010s Buzzfeed rage-bait article style.
If folks like the design choices Gnome makes, then great. Use Gnome!
If people don't like Gnome, then it's not like there isn't a range of mature alternatives out there like Cinnamon, MATE, and XFCE.
Heck, you can have a great desktop experience using the KDE apps and Plasma these days if you don't like Gnome's decisions.
And is Gnome's design choices really the worst thing going on in the world right now? Really?!
Like, is it even in the top 1000 worst things happening right now?@aj I remember the time pre-gnome; Fiddling with xf86 files; manually selecting VGA modes for you monitor, hoping you’d get it exactly right. Gnome fixed all that complexity brilliantly.
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@tragivictoria
I mean to agree with @vkc FOSS users don't need to overreact to dev decisions, because the community can change the software to their liking. Extensions are just a for-instance for how these changes are shared@lxak@goblin.technology @vkc@linuxmom.net oh no, i didnt meant to question this, i just meant to say that extensions arent really necessary here, since there are at least 3 GUI options for changing it (and its being discussed to put it in Settings app)
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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 got annoyed regularly by middle click back in fuckin 1997, I’m glad others hate it too
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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 have no issue with people that prefer GNOME. Choice is good.
What isn't good is :
1) 'a valid user of Linux' is a problem, right there. *Unix* is not just Linux. I understand this is (hopefully) shorthand, but still..
2) Middle button gate. Good : doing your own unique thing. Bad : potentially excluding people and discounting their workflow for no good reason. *Especially* when it did work, and then does not.
3) Using GNOME as a shortcut for making Wayland accessible. Not really a GNOME issue, but if the only way to make Wayland usable for various groups is a specific compositor such as GNOME rather than fixing Wayland to work with *all* compositors, it's a real issue that restricts the choice of using Unix.
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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 hear hear!
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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 Middle-click paste is one of those "weird Unix" interaction things that really requires other "weird Unix" things to work well, namely focus-follows-mouse and the concept of an X11-like selection mechanism.
It broke when scrollwheels took over the middle button.
It broke when you slipped while bringing a window to the front, thus causing a selection in *that* other window, and thus losing the selection from the first one that you intended to middle-paste.
I loved it in 1996; not anymore.
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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 I've never had GNOME prevent me from using another desktop!
I have, however, had another desktop prevent me from using GNOME.
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@lxak@goblin.technology @vkc@linuxmom.net oh no, i didnt meant to question this, i just meant to say that extensions arent really necessary here, since there are at least 3 GUI options for changing it (and its being discussed to put it in Settings app)
@tragivictoria
Oh cool! You'd know more than me -
@Saorsa @vkc it's wrong to assume that *everybody* agrees on most things, or even on most things. This was never the case, and it will never be, and it's ok, and the big advantage, is that besides having a lot of optionsm we have mostly Free Software the have the power to fork. Those who don't like this, don't Like Free Software.
It's ok for GNOME to do whatever GNOME wants to do, that's called freedom. I say this and I don't always agree with them, and I use GNOME since I use Linux (decades)
I try not avoid making assumptions that aren't already save or measurable empirically. I was elaborating on the the cause and effect of GNOME, their actions and how they are received by the larger FOSS community.
GNOME are free to act in accordance with how the foundation and the collective from which it is composed wish to manage the development of their software and surrounding community. There are social consequences however, to neglecting the needs and interests of the people using it.
Telling someone to go fork the software or go elsewhere is not a reasonable response nor conductive to keeping a healthy community and userbase. It only communicates that you are not interested in considering external output which will rightfully make the people who use and are invested in GNOME and its ecosystem rightfully frustrated.
That is why my previous post outlines and urges the necessity of listening to your community and move in lock step with them or else you'll end up in the same circumstance that GNOME currently is.
@DiogoConstantino@masto.pt @vkc@linuxmom.net -
@aj I remember the time pre-gnome; Fiddling with xf86 files; manually selecting VGA modes for you monitor, hoping you’d get it exactly right. Gnome fixed all that complexity brilliantly.
@peterrenshaw @aj If Gnome works for you, that's great, but I suspect you're ascribing it functionality that is Linux specific or unrelated to gnome.
The move from CRT monitors to TFT, and EDID existing on everything helped a lot. xf86, and xorg, became largely self configuring.
Unfortunately I have to let you know that if you're running modern xorg *right now* on a CRT (even one with proper EDID) it may still be necessary to manually configure configurations. If you're using multiple GPUs, gnome will not help, because it runs after X starts. I know this because FreeBSD is merrily telling me 'you have to manually specify the GPU' today.
Wayland is 'better' if by 'better' you define 'it starts without configuration', but not if 'it delivers all functionality that could be reasonably expected regardless of the compositor in use'.
Although X configuration files were and are, agreed, A Pain they worked *everywhere*. As opposed to multiple options for compositors, which may not work at all!
