When I cut/copy a string from a program, intending to paste it into another, exiting the first program causes the cut/copy buffer to be lost or erased. I've been looking for a setting to turn this off. It used to work correctly years ago, but more recently this is happening with more programs. Any one know why this is happening? Is the app erasing what it saved when it exits? Or better yet, how do I fix it?

This issue bothered me too but not enough to chase it down until now, there's some good reading here which clears up the misunderstanding. Basically you need to run a clipboard manager (glipper?) which will receive the copied data, then the source application can exit and the selection isn't lost.

cheers

X11 used to do both. It seems when it went over to Xorg that got changed. But it still works the old way on a Slackware system I have at home. I can merely hightlight some text, kill the process that has that text (window disappears), and the text can still be pasted in with the middle button, at least on the programs I've tried it on. The only funny issues I've seen were when I highlighted text in program A, then also did so in program B, program A would UNhighlight it only for SOME programs, but not for some others. Thus in some cases I could see TWO highlightings and if I forgot the order I highlighted them, not know which would be pasted in.

OK, so I installed glipper via apt-get in Ubuntu 10.10. It installed apparently OK. But it is not running. There was a doc file included in the package, but only has install docs, except saying to look at the web site for help. The web site says to right click on its panel icon and choose help. But there is no icon for it anywhere. Apparently I need to add one, but they do not say what parameters that needs.

Glipper was only a suggestion, it doesn't seem to be available in Fedora any more .. I just tried parcellite and tested "copy from app1, close app1, paste into app2" successfully, it starts automatically as well.

cheers