Intermittently, when I right click on content and choose “Copy”, the content does not actually go into the clipboard for pasting (instead, whatever was there before remains). I’ve noticed this most prominently with the standard Gnome Text Editor program.
It seems like it might be related to using an alternate keyboard layout? (Programmer Dvorak). I’m using right-click copy because the C on that layout is not ergonomic and I haven’t updated my shortcuts everywhere yet. So, I’m not sure if this issue is just more noticable in that layout (because I use right-click copy instead of the shortcut) or if the layout is actually a cause. Switching back to QWERTY and using the keyboard shortcut almost always works.
Also, maybe related: I’ve noticed that copying/moving files to thumb drives often fails, no matter which drive/port I use. It copies the first 90% or so, but then just fails to finish the file.
Any ideas on what to look into next, or how I might fix this?
The problems seem unrelated. Maybe a bad memory chip could be a common factor that could cause something like that?
I’ve noticed problems with “selection” paste in GNOME on and off for a few years. Traditionally, Linux has had two buffers for copy-and-pasting data – one that you move data into with Ctrl+C (or Ctrl+X) and paste with Ctrl+V and another that always holds whatever is “selected”. With the latter, you don’t have to press any keys to copy the text, just highlight some text somewhere and then press Shift+Insert to paste a copy of what was last highlighted/selected (clicking the middle mouse button usually works to paste selected text as well). Selection paste still seems to work on my Sway PC, but the functionality is spotty on my GNOME PC. I’m very close to reformatting my GNOME PC with Sway because of this problem.
Another thing that might stop a file copy operation before it finishes is the OOM daemon (the out-of-memory daemon will kill a process that seems to be using too much RAM).
Edit: I think there might be a problem specifically with gedit. Right now, if I highlight some text on this forum, I can use Shift+Insert to paste it into Vim running in a terminal window, but I cannot do the same to paste the text into gedit.
There is a lot of diversity across keyboards, so it is not unusual to have issues even with simple things like cut and paste. With luck, someone who has sorted out your issue will see this post and respond.
Failing that: Linux provides good tools for use by developers to support different languages and layouts. Unless you are prepared to dive into the technical details you should bring your issue to the attention of the developers with a good bug report describing how to reproduce your issue.