Does copying/pasting with the scroll button work on every linux distro?

[CrazedNerd]

I just learned that all you need to do to copy and paste on linux is:

-highlight the text you want to copy...this loads that text into an X Windows buffer.

-click you mouse wheel!

I think that's amazing and great! Does this work on every linux distro? Vim/Emacs from a non-professional standpoint actually makes more sense if you know this trick...

 

[Brickwizard]

I have always used copy & paste, and can't think of any distro that I have used over the years , where it didn't work

 

[captain-sensible]

Does this work on every linux distro?

Nope but ctl +v for pasting eg on this post after copying or say geany and ctrl + shift + v for alacritty terminal on Arch is pretty universal and ctrl +c to copy

 

[KGIII]

Those that support both buffers, yes. I'd expect some of the more scantily featured to not have it, as well as those that don't have a desktop environment. Press CTRL + ALT + F3 and it's unlikely to work in TTY. But, if you open a terminal that'll let you do so 'cause the buffers are there from your window manager/DE.

 

[a2tmk]

@CrazedNerd

I never heard of that scroll wheel trick, I just tried it in Mint Xfce and it works.

Cheers!

 

[KGIII]

@dm999 You have two buffers. You can hold something in cut/paste and another in the scroll wheel buffer.

So, copy this with the right click menu:

A

Now, highlight this:

B

Now, go press the scroll wheel again in a text file. Then, press SHIFT + INSERT.

Now, highlight this:

C

Now, do the same thing again in that text file. The scroll wheel press should post the C and the SHIFT + INSERT should still retain what you copied and pasted earlier (the letter A).

It has its uses. I use it daily when filling in my Lubuntu beta test reports.

 

[dos2unix]

There is a package called gpm. This gets installed by most of the mainstream distros by default.
It's in the repo's of most distro's even if it doesn't get installed.

This lets you copy and paste in a terminal, even if you aren't running in Xwindows.

 

[Condobloke]

@dos2unix said...

There is a package called gpm. This gets installed by most of the mainstream distros by default.
It's in the repo's of most distro's even if it doesn't get installed.

I installed gpm on Linux Mint 20.3 (Cinnamon), and copied and pasted the above sentence from dos2unix's above post.

Highlighted the sentence....pressed the scroll button to copy.......selected where I was going to pastre to and again hit the scroll button to paste.

 

[KGIII]

That gpm is almost enough for an article on L-T. Hmm... Maybe a short article. It's entirely new to me, but pretty awesome.

 

[CrazedNerd]

That gpm is almost enough for an article on L-T. Hmm... Maybe a short article. It's entirely new to me, but pretty awesome.

What is L-T?

 

[Condobloke]

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[KGIII]

^ What he said.