Why the clipboard in Suse/KDE behaves like Windows

Having used various *nix desktops, I’ve grown accustom to the everything you select, goes to the clipboard. Using either a middle or right click, or CTRL-V will paste the contents where its intended.

What I didn’t realise is that there are actually 2 clipboards. One for the keyboard shortcut method and one for the selection. As per the Klipper documenation:

The X Window System® uses two separate clipboard buffers: the “selection” and the “clipboard”. Text is placed in the selection buffer by simply selecting it, and can be pasted with the middle mouse button. To place text in the clipboard buffer, select it and press Ctrl-X or Ctrl-C. Text from the clipboard buffer is pasted using Ctrl-V or by selecting Edit->Paste.

There is a setting in the Klipper preferences to either keep the clipboards seperate (default) or automatically synchronise them. Selecting the former led me back to my happy, select text anywhere and paste with CTRL-V as well as middle mouse button. As I grow to become more of a haXor, I may see the benefit in two clipboards, but for now…

Old Windows habbits die hard

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