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I switched from Gnome to KDE (5 Plasma) recently, but am unable to copy text from some applications.

  • In Kate, I copy some text (either using ctrl+C, or with right-click-copy).
  • I paste (either ctrl-V, or right-click-paste) and some old text gets pasted -- text I copied a few hours ago.
  • in the context menu, "clipboard history", I can see the text I just copied, as if it had copied correctly.
  • I switch to any other application and I cannot paste that new text either.

It's not specific to Kate:

  • Exactly the same problem when copying/pasting in Konsole, and in Dolphin.

But other applications can copy fine...

  • I switch to Matlab, and copy some text to the clipboard (alt+W, or right-click-copy)
  • I paste the text (ctrl+Y, or right-click paste), and the new text pastes correctly
  • I switch to Kate/Konsole, and paste, and the new text copied from Matlab pastes correctly!!!
  • Similarly, I can copy text OK from Firefox, and from Libre Office.

System info:

$ plasmashell --version
plasmashell 5.12.8

$ kf5-config --version
Qt: 5.9.5
KDE Frameworks: 5.44.0
kf5-config: 1.0

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
Release:    18.04
Codename:   bionic

$ kate --version
kate 17.12.3

% dpkg -l | grep plasma-desktop
ii  plasma-desktop   4:5.12.9.1-0ubuntu0.1

So it seems to be copying from specific programs that is broken. Any thoughts on how I can go about debugging this? Is this some incompatibility between GTK, Qt and KDE? I have tried:

  • disabling System Tray Settings / General / Extra / Clipboard
  • re-enabling Clipboard
  • restarting computer of course.
DK Bose
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Sanjay Manohar
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  • How did you do this: "I switched from Gnome to KDE (5 Plasma)"? I'm asking because I have the same software versions but don't see any problems re. copy/paste. The notable difference is that my system is a clean install of Kubuntu 18.04. – DK Bose Nov 11 '19 at 13:23
  • I used sudo tasksel install kubuntu-desktop and sudo apt install sddm, about 6 months after installing bionic from canonical. All seemed to go smoothly at the time but I am suspicious(!) I'd really rather not re-install... – Sanjay Manohar Nov 11 '19 at 14:53
  • What happens if you log into a GNOME session? Do the same combinations of applications give you the same problems? – DK Bose Nov 11 '19 at 15:43
  • Take a look at https://askubuntu.com/questions/982597/how-does-clipboard-work – ubfan1 Nov 11 '19 at 16:43
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    The same problem here on Kubuntu 18.04. At some very rare times the clipboard functionality can come back without restarting the incapacitated Konsole/Kate, but after closing some other windows. – MKaama Jul 19 '20 at 19:42

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