One of the most difficult things to deal with while using a Linux desktop is the clipboard. There are apparently two clipboards on my desktop — perhaps more? I’m running Debian Etch w/ Gnome 2 based apps, if that matters.

If you copy text from one window, you may not be able to paste it in to another if it contains certain characters. For example, press releases on Google’s AP site include some sort of double-dash character. If you’re careful not to select that character, you can copy from the page and paste into gnome-terminal or xterm. A more annoying example: to copy text displayed in Flash, you have to select the text, right-click and choose Copy, and then paste it in to some other application such as Firefox or Pidgin. Then copy it from there and paste it to your terminal. It’s a major hassle.

Then there are situations where you’ll copy text in one window and try to paste into another, only to end up pasting something completely different that you’d selected ages ago. It’s almost enough to make me want to switch to Windows at work.

Those of you who use Linux as a desktop: How do you deal with this issue? Or, alternatively, how have you avoided it?

I’ve tried to use glipper, but it doesn’t seem to install properly, at least on my desktop. It won’t appear as a panel option, and when it’s run from the menu, nothing happens. It just sits there and uses CPU time, reading and writing from some buffer over and over again. If glipper really is the shit I’ll try to figure out what’s wrong with my installation of it, but if it’s shit I’ll look elsewhere.