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Comment by doix | Hacker News Reader

I have the exact opposite problem on a Mac. Things don't just work. You can select text in the terminal and then middle click to paste it. But that only works in the terminal, not anywhere else.

Catches me out a bunch. There is also only a single copy buffer, so to copy from the terminal and paste into a browser I need to replace what was in my clipboard, drives me insane.

> Which I would've really expected more Linux users would value more than they seem to.

Because you get used to it and then don't think about it. I value having two copy buffers over consistency for the sake of consistency.

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A clipboard manager solves all of this and doesn't break the consistency and expectation that the same shortcut copies/pastes to/from the same place.

Which one do you recommend? I tried multiple when switching, but none of them quite worked right. I want:

* Two seperate buffers

* Separate shortcuts to paste them

* Selecting text _anywhere_ automatically puts it into the second buffer

I couldn't find anything that did this, so I just gave up and deal with it on my work laptop (and occasionally whine about it on HN when it comes up)

> You can select text in the terminal and then middle click to paste it. But that only works in the terminal, not anywhere else.

I guess this is likely an odd affordance to unix norms rather than a planned/intended shortcut (I've never tried it & never knew it worked anywhere). I'm not much of a mouse user in terminals though so I guess it would just be a little less natural.

Command c command v works fine for me because I don’t “optimise” my experience.

It’s a fun game to do I guess but if you become “more productive” by having a slightly quicker mechanism to find a file through 9 different chords on your terminal only interface - you likely aren’t solving problems that are worthwhile.

I've heard this opinion worded slightly different many, many times over the years. I just can't agree with it. You're going to spend thousands of hours infront of a computer, it makes sense to invest time in being "efficient".

You reach a point of diminishing returns with everything. You can only gain so much knowledge/intelligence/experience before every increase in that becomes extremely difficult. Trying to become "smarter" when you are already "smart" is much harder than getting easy efficiency wins.

There are people that take it to the extreme of course, where they spend all their time on extremely tiny efficiency wins instead of learning how to program, but that's the same problem in reverse.

It's a pretty old concept, the first time I've seen it given a proper name was "aggregation of marginal gains" [0].

[0] https://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains

> it makes sense to invest time in being "efficient".

It does. However, spending time remembering which of the different weird buffers something is pasted into is not being efficient.

It's not "weird buffers".

It's a feature you're not accustomed to.

Yes. Yes they are weird buffers in that you have to spend some (minor) effort remembering what exactly is in the "clipboard", "selection", and the difference of invoking them between apps (e.g. having to Ctrl+Shift+V in the terminal).

Oh, and the fact that selection buffer gets overwritten if you switch between apps with active selections.

Oh, usually there's also a cherry on top in that everyone's darling, vim, doesn't even interact with any of those and has its own buffers aka registers.

I'm sure if there was a way to track how many time you make and undo mistakes in copy-pasting the wrong thing from the wrong buffer, your assumptions would be seriously challenged.

> I'm sure if there was a way to track how many time you make and undo mistakes in copy-pasting the wrong thing from the wrong buffer, your assumptions would be seriously challenged.

> Oh, and the fact that selection buffer gets overwritten if you switch between apps with active selections.

What can I tell you...

Use a clipboard manager.

The end.

> Use a clipboard manager.

> The end.

Does it fix the issue with the multiple buffers and minor annoyances?

No. It just adds a different friction point.

The end.

> Does it fix the issue with the multiple buffers and minor annoyances?

The stuff you mentioned so far is all about you not configuring your setup:

- buffers: You configure your clipboard manager to use a single buffer.

- vim: configure to use global clipboard if that's your preference

- X11: dont use legacy software

> No. It just adds a different friction point.

You think using software that implements functionality you deem missing "adds friction", and yet you still want said missing functionality and complain about it is missing.

That's wild.

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