They're probably referring to gnome's history of controversial opinions that many users don't like, such as:
- "simplifying the UI" by removing many useful features (like systray icons)
- "what makes you think sharpness is a metric?"
- claiming fractional scaling is dumb because "monitors don't have fractional pixels"
- "we know what users want" while ignoring most user feedback
- "we're not copying mac OS" while blatantly doing so
- "consistency is key" then changes entire UI paradigm every release
- "what's the usecase for <insert well-known feature>?"
- intentionally obscuring how to access / in the file picker
And in general just being incredibly tone-deaf and abusive to their own users on the forums. Torvalds has been calling out their "users are idiots and are confused by functionality" stance for over 20 years now.
I once watched a co-worker completely bork a customer system by accidentally middle-clicking while moving his mouse after copying an ls -l of /usr/bin (where pretty much everything was a symlink to the real executables in /bin).
Yeah, he shouldn't have been logged in as root, but the point remains that middle-mouse paste can be extremely dangerous and fat-finger-prone.
That problem has been solved by terminals whose readline awaits actual user input (actual enter from the keyboard) even when you paste a command with single line break or a multiline command. Most linux terminals do that nowadays, and it's also great for giving you a chance to review that oneliner you've copied from the browser, which could contain something different than what was shown.
I love Linux, but the cut and paste situation is really terrible. The middle mouse paste isn't a problem for me--it's that there are two separate "clipboard" buffers, which just causes all sorts of problems.
This is like, the least bad thing GNOME have ever done. Middle-click pasting makes no logical sense and only exists as a holdover from before copy-paste conventions were established. Nobody would design it this way today.
It's still a change. GNOME dictates onto users what the developers think the users should use or have. I find that not acceptable.
> GNOME dictates onto users what the developers think the users should use or have. I find that not acceptable.
Every operating system (or DE) does that. Hell, every piece of software does that. They're all just a bunch of opinions wrapped in a user interface.
Some may provide more opportunities to change the defaults, but those defaults still remain.
They're probably referring to gnome's history of controversial opinions that many users don't like, such as:
- "simplifying the UI" by removing many useful features (like systray icons)
- "what makes you think sharpness is a metric?"
- claiming fractional scaling is dumb because "monitors don't have fractional pixels"
- "we know what users want" while ignoring most user feedback
- "we're not copying mac OS" while blatantly doing so
- "consistency is key" then changes entire UI paradigm every release
- "what's the usecase for <insert well-known feature>?"
- intentionally obscuring how to access / in the file picker
And in general just being incredibly tone-deaf and abusive to their own users on the forums. Torvalds has been calling out their "users are idiots and are confused by functionality" stance for over 20 years now.
Yes, but the problem is the GNOME organization is headed by opinionated morons with zero clue how to design a user interface.
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I once watched a co-worker completely bork a customer system by accidentally middle-clicking while moving his mouse after copying an ls -l of /usr/bin (where pretty much everything was a symlink to the real executables in /bin).
Yeah, he shouldn't have been logged in as root, but the point remains that middle-mouse paste can be extremely dangerous and fat-finger-prone.
That problem has been solved by terminals whose readline awaits actual user input (actual enter from the keyboard) even when you paste a command with single line break or a multiline command. Most linux terminals do that nowadays, and it's also great for giving you a chance to review that oneliner you've copied from the browser, which could contain something different than what was shown.
1 reply →
I love Linux, but the cut and paste situation is really terrible. The middle mouse paste isn't a problem for me--it's that there are two separate "clipboard" buffers, which just causes all sorts of problems.
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Shift+Insert has always been my preferred method of pasting into a terminal after too many mishaps with right-click or middle-click paste.
This can be said about literally any software? And as GP points out, it's not "dictating what you can use or have" - you can turn it back on.
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This is like, the least bad thing GNOME have ever done. Middle-click pasting makes no logical sense and only exists as a holdover from before copy-paste conventions were established. Nobody would design it this way today.
GNOME is doing something right for a change and fixing a common source of security issues.
If you like it, just keep the behavior enabled.
Never in my life have I heard of this security issue.
defaults matter a lot!
Developers change defaults all the time and make things far worse.
Vim 9.0 default changes required a 6 line vimrc to undo the damage.