I was just reading this thread… https://sh.itjust.works/post/23476261

…and it got me thinking about something that I’ve wanted for a long time. Why is it that keyboards have not evolved to have dedicated copy/paste keys left of the main board? I’d love to see an additional column of keys left of Esc->Ctrl configurable as macros at least. I do a lot of copy/paste for work. The current shortcuts arent terrible or anything but they’re not exactly comfortable. I’d rather move my whole hand to the left for a macro key than contort to hit the current shortcut.

What do you think?

  • @[email protected]
    2•3 months ago

    It’s a Linux problem in the sense that like you say, the X window manager hijacked the middle mouse button for a different functionality way back in the day and the browser developers, and others as well, just respect that decision by default, even if it never made any sense. Many people are now used to it and prefer it like this so there was always resistance to changing it to how windows does it and just drop the whole mouse wheel does text manipulation thing.

    If and until that changes to the sensible way, at least people like me have the configurations to fix it so I guess it could be worse.

    • @Nibodhika
      2•3 months ago

      There’s no dropping the text manipulation thing, the setting on Firefox is completely under Firefox developers control, and has nothing to do with what the button does somewhere else. That’s like saying it’s a Windows problem that a shortcut is different by default on a given program, complain to Firefox devs if you think the default should be enabled.

      Also you’re making a huge deal out of something that’s two clicks away, middle mouse button works as a navigation tool on Linux just like it does on Windows, additionally it provides extra features under some circumstances.

      So to recap:

      • You claim it should be a navigation button.
      • I told you it’s a navigation button as well
      • You claim it doesn’t auto-scroll
      • I told you it does
      • You claim it’s not on by default
      • I told you it’s the programs option what’s the default
      • You claim this is still Linux’s fault

      Honestly it’s always the same, people claim Linux has a problem whenever a third party program does something. Linux is not perfect, but I have never seen anyone who doesn’t use it actually list any of those problems, they always point at third party software as proof that Linux is bad.