Hi,

A question about making clipboard experience like MS Windows:

I read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Clipboard I think I am obviously always getting this PRIMARY/CLIPBOARD confusion, so I don't get copy and paste (text) working when I want with what applications I want. Typically not working between something like gvim to xterm running midnight commander (IIRC).

So which clipboard manager from the list in that article will give me a user experience equivalent to (text) copy and paste on a MS Windows system. I want it to play nice with VNC, RDP and synergy connections with Windows machines - for Slackware/Ubuntu/CentOS/Redhat/Android and Suse Distros (those are all the Distro I come in contact with)?

What features am I looking for in Linux clipboard managers, so I can keep look out when yet another one comes along?

TIA

Please for give me have not seen a windows system since 2004. Except once in a while in VM. First thing you need to do is think linux. After that the tool is very simple.
slackware enable GDM. and some times you may have to do a ctrl c and a ctrl v to get the stuff captured in the memory buffer to print out.

I too have not used that other OS for 15+ years, so cannot compare directly.

But I use both xclip and xsel and copy/paste between terminal and GUI applications without thinking much about it.

I disable gpm and use only keyboard selections in terminals, but with gpm enabled you can also select in terminals with a mouse.

I would suggest starting with xsel, I use it the most and don't have to think much about it.

GDM do you mean start a Graphical Display Manager?

I will do some testing with xclip and xsel and see if life improves. Definitely need gpm because Midnight Commander run in a an xterm or virtual console and using mouse is more productive IMHO. You have no idea how crazy (text) copy/paste seem to people moving from MS Windows to Linux. :-p

Just out of curiosity how do you disable gpm is via under /etc/rc.d/init.d control? (Don't have a Linux machine operational at present or would have looked)

Thank you for pointing that out. gpm. Thank you

I see your post in "What programs would you like to see ported to Linux?" but I will mention ClipIt here as a simple clipboard history manager.
As far as pasting into Midnight Commander goes -- I think that will require a Shift+Ctrl+V. For terminal sessions within the desktop environment all that is necessary for cut, copy and past shortcuts to work is holding down Shift when in the terminal. It's a bit confusing at first and you find yourself Ctrl+Shift+C or whatever in GUI programs at first but once you get the hang of it it becomes second nature, at least it did to me.

"clipit" looks equivalent to what I use in MS windows, so I will take it for a test drive too. Thanks for shortcut tip I will try that. Can I take that to mean that any program that runs in a default xterm session or virtual console "should" support Ctrl+Shift+C and I am assuming it is putting this in the X11 CLIPBOARD buffer ?

The shift trick only works for terminal sessions opened in windows within the X desktop because, as you mention, entries are stored within the X11 session's clipboard. But, yes, anything within the terminal ought to accept it -- I use it to paste things into nano, for example.

It's funny to me that someone wants Windows clipboard action when whenever I'm in windows (usually someone elses box) I find myself swiping a line of text and trying to paste it without going through the menues for copy and paste just by pasting with the middle mouse button (2 steps instead of 4) , which doesn't work in windows, and sighing "Oh yeah...right...windows"
:P

Not the "Widows clipboard action" but, depending upon which part of the discussion you mean, either the ability to copy and paste from one application to another even if it is a terminal or the ability to have a clipboard history. Besides, why on earth not use Ctrl+v to paste? It's been pretty much universal in Windows and Linux for years.
Also, most laptops I have come across in the past decade (and that has been a fair few) don't have a "middle mouse" and while I know it is possible to generate it on some models by clicking both buttons it's hardly a common thing to have any more. Which, I admit, is a shame.

Yup. Double-click will copy, too, but swiping is better if you want to copy more than one word.

Good point! and although I don't use laptops much and tend to plug in a real mouse, lately I am finding that I enjoy the speed of tiling window managers and never, or rather extremely rarely, ever having to take my hands off my keyboard..... which doesn't change the fact that after all these years there is nothing I miss about Windows and I usually dread having to try to work in it.

the ctl-c ctl-v clipboard and the 'swipe/middle mouse button' clipboard are actually 2 separate independent clip boards, try it some time, copy one section of text with ctl-c, then swipe another section and middle click, then hit ctl v, you'll get two separate blocks of text

can't tell me that having an extra clipboard isn't handy, albeit there are some programs (such as terminals) that only work with the middle click, ghough gnome-terminal you can access the ctl-c/ctl-v clipboard by right clicking and pasting

hope this helps

I always liked the middle-click copy/paste - total simplicity even for my two-button touchpad. It always works between shells, and for some, but not all X applications - you just don't have to think much about it!

But for the past few years I have spent most of my time working within a tmux'd environment (i.e. multiplexed terminals similar to screen) which I configure to use Vim-style key bindings to paste between terminals and X applications. This uses tmux's own multiple buffered selections which are persistent between console and X sessions.

I have then configured tmux to use xsel (on Linux) or xclip (on FreeBSD) to read/write any of the three X selection buffers (PRIMARY, SECONDARY and CLIPBOARD) with Ctl-C and Ctl-V type key bindings, which allows my shells to copy/paste even with the odd X application that works in a far from normal way - there are a few! So I always have end-to-end copy paste from console to X applications with no unhandled cases... very nice!

Finally, I also have written a few special purpose shell scripts that allow me to pipe from some source, transform the stream then pipe into xsel or xclip to put the result directly into the clipboard, which is then used as input in native format to an X application that otherwise provides no alternative import methods. This method has been a lifesaver for my sole legacy Window$ application running under Wine.

The Unix/Linux clipboard system is far more versatile than simple Window$-ish copy paste!