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/

GNOME dev gives fans of Linux's middle-click paste the middle finger

Opinion: Proposal targets long-standing behavior as 'an X11ism'

The Register

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.

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.

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 Agreed. Although I wish wayland actually cared about accessibility
It’s True, “We” Don’t Care About Accessibility on Linux

What do concern trolls and privileged people without visible or invisible disabilities who share or make content about accessibility on Linux being trash without contributing anything to projects have in common? They don’t actually really care about the group they’re defending; they just exploit these victims’ unfortunate situation to fuel hate against groups and projects actually trying to make the world a better place. I never thought I’d be this upset to a point I’d be writing an article about something this sensitive with a clickbait-y title. It’s simultaneously demotivating, unproductive, and infuriating. I’m here writing this post fully knowing that I could have been working on accessibility in GNOME, but really, I’m so tired of having my mood ruined because of privileged people spending at most 5 minutes to write erroneous posts and then pretending to be oblivious when confronted while it takes us 5 months of unpaid work to get a quarter of recognition, let alone acknowledgment, without accounting for the time “wasted” addressing these accusations. This is far from the first time, and it will certainly not be the last.

TheEvilSkeleton