When you come from GUI to text-based terminal, you might miss the cut and past mouse functionality.

You can use your mouse to copy and paste at a terminal. Install gpm which is a cut and paste utility and mouse server for virtual consoles.

What is gpm?

‘gpm‘ provides mouse support to text-based Linux applications like the Emacs editor and the Midnight Commander file management system. Gpm also provides console cut-and-paste operations using the mouse and includes a program to allow pop-up menus to appear at the click of a mouse button.

From the man page, “This package tries to be a useful mouse server for applications running on the Linux console. It is based on the “selection” package, and some of its code comes from selection itself. This package is intended as a replacement for “selection” as a cut-and-paste mechanism; it also provides additional facilities. The “selection” package offered the first cut-and-paste implementation for Linux using two mouse buttons, and the cut buffer is still called “selection buffer” or just “selection” throughout this document. The information below is extracted from the texinfo file, which is the preferred source of information.”

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Howto: Linux configure the Mouse at a text based terminal for copy and paste operation

Originally from nixCraft by nixcraft

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