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
@draeand
@vkc

This is not at all about wayland, the protocol, and you mean you wish desktop environments gave it a higher priority. People do care, but it unfortunately wasn't given enough attention for a long time.
@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
@draeand @emi @vkc accessibility is first-class citizen. But you know what? Its fucking difficult and companies do not bother to fund this effort. The only reason we have any accessibility at all is because Sun funded it for their Solaris.
@tragivictoria @draeand @emi @vkc Devs already abandoned X11 while Wayland is still not ready especially on accessibility. I don't think the companies are the only ones to blame.

@Unn0wn @draeand @emi @vkc "not ready" what it lacks?

And situation of accessibility isnt great, but it wasnt going to get better on x11. Thats important difference.

@tragivictoria @draeand @emi @vkc I'm not against Wayland. I'm against pushing it hard when it's still not ready. Yes X11 accessibility isn't getting better but it's still better than Wayland yet people are already forcing Wayland before solving the issue.
@Unn0wn @tragivictoria @emi @vkc It literally lacked global keyboard hooking for the longest time in the name of "security". This wasn't like for a few months, either, it was for 3/4 of Waylands existance. It also still to my knowledge lacks tools like xdotool or features that allow OCRing of any arbitrary window based on a global keyboard shortcut without arbitrary (and undocumented) DE extensions.
@draeand @Unn0wn @emi @vkc global shortcuts are implemented since 48. And yeah, every app being keyboard logger isnt exactly secure, thats why we have proper protocol for this. We also have ydotool https://github.com/ReimuNotMoe/ydotool. I sadly dont know what OCR abbreviation is, and my quick ddg search didnt proved useful.
GitHub - ReimuNotMoe/ydotool: Generic command-line automation tool

Generic command-line automation tool. Contribute to ReimuNotMoe/ydotool development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
@tragivictoria @Unn0wn @emi @vkc Optical character recognission. And yes, global keyboard shortcuts have been around since Gnome 48. The key word is Gnome. It's not a core spec thing. Yes, global keyboard access is insecure, if you cast your net broadly. But I don't understand the worry around it. Any reasonably competant keylogger is just going to hook your keyboard via udev and bypass the compositor entirely.
@draeand @Unn0wn @emi @vkc the only core protocol is wayland, the rest is optional, and they are either standardised or not. Global keyboard shortcuts protocol is a standard and is implemented by many compositors
@tragivictoria @Unn0wn @emi @vkc Really? Last I heard every compositor did their own thing with regards to it/xdotool/OCR and such.