[SOLVED] Unable to copy and paste

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edward
Posts: 146
Joined: Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:01 pm
Location: Boston

[SOLVED] Unable to copy and paste

Post by edward »

I just discovered the inability to copy and paste in LXDE. Running Fedora Linux 29.

Due to video-related issues, I have disabled hardware acceleratiom for the nouveau driver at system boot-up, this also made it necessary to remove two other desktop environments on the computer, as with hardware acceleration enabled, X would crash if attempting to login in with either of those desktop environments. The remaining desktop environments installed are LXDE, LXQt and KDE Plasma.

What happens is, for example, if I am in LXTerminal and highlight some text, once I move the mouse pointer off of the active terminal window, the highlighting immediately disappears. What also occurs, is if I copy a link/URL or text on a web page, open a new browser tab, then attempt to paste the text or link/URL in the address bar on the new tab or in the search field, both Paste and Paste and Go are grayed out on the right-click menu.

I cannot see how disabling the hardware acceleration would cause this behavior. If I re-enable it, I will then not be able to use KDE Plasma. Copy and paste works fine with LXQt and KDE Plasma.

Is there any possible explanation as to why copy and paste isn't working now? Thank you in advance for any responses.
Last edited by edward on Sun Feb 10, 2019 7:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Debian Sid - LXDE
drooly
Posts: 791
Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2013 6:45 am

Re: Unable to copy and paste

Post by drooly »

edward wrote:if I copy a link/URL or text on a web page, open a new browser tab, then attempt to paste the text or link/URL in the address bar on the new tab or in the search field, both Paste and Paste and Go are grayed out on the right-click menu.
how exactly do you copy?
edward
Posts: 146
Joined: Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:01 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Unable to copy and paste

Post by edward »

drooly wrote:
edward wrote:if I copy a link/URL or text on a web page, open a new browser tab, then attempt to paste the text or link/URL in the address bar on the new tab or in the search field, both Paste and Paste and Go are grayed out on the right-click menu.
how exactly do you copy?
Highlight/scroll with mouse.
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drooly
Posts: 791
Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2013 6:45 am

Re: Unable to copy and paste

Post by drooly »

you still have to key Ctrl-C then, or right click and "Copy".

well, actually it depends if you or the application in question uses the primary or secondary clipboard.
for the primary, a simple highlight is enough to copy, and SHift+Insert to paste, or middle-click.
primary and secondary clipboard are not automatically in sync.
edward
Posts: 146
Joined: Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:01 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Unable to copy and paste

Post by edward »

drooly wrote:you still have to key Ctrl-C then, or right click and "Copy".

well, actually it depends if you or the application in question uses the primary or secondary clipboard.
for the primary, a simple highlight is enough to copy, and SHift+Insert to paste, or middle-click.
primary and secondary clipboard are not automatically in sync.
I just tried copying and pasting with LibreOffice. Paste on the right-click menu, nor CTRL-V work with that either. Also tried SHIFT-INS to paste, it didn't work.

UPDATE: I found an article where someone else was having copy/paste issues with Fedora and in that instance, it was the Clipit clipboard manager causing the issue, the article mentions somehow it was related to a migration of X11 to Wayland, although my system is running X11.

Upon removing Clipit using dnf, which also removed two (now) unused dependencies (libxdo and xdotool) then a system reboot, copy and paste now works again in LXDE. I also tried CTRL-V and SHIFT-INS, all working now. :D
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drooly
Posts: 791
Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2013 6:45 am

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to copy and paste

Post by drooly »

^ yes i use clipit for precisely that reason - because it can be made to sync primary and secondary clipboards.
i delight in its functionality every day.
i think you were/are just confused about which application uses which clipboard functionality.
maybe this search can help.
edward
Posts: 146
Joined: Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:01 pm
Location: Boston

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to copy and paste

Post by edward »

I have Fedora installed on a second system (with AMD video) and have a few other desktop environments installed on that. When I looked at LXDE on this other system, I noticed it was not loading Clipit at login, which explains why I did not have this problem on that system.
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