Currently I am running the 8.04 (Hardy) release, version 2.22.3 (Ubuntu 2008-07-09), kernal 2.6.24-23-386 (#1 Sun Jan 25 23:32:00 UTC 2009), GCC version 4.2.4 (i486-linux-gnu).
I have run a few versions of Ubuntu over the last 3 or 4 years on a Compaq Presario with 900 MHz AMD Duron(tm) Processor. And I have always had this problem while using the Ubuntu Text Editor, any other text editor, or any word processor. It has been on all versions, so I suspect it is hardware specific, but have not been able to test it on other computers.
After I copy or cut some text into the buffer (using Ctrl-C or Ctrl-X), and after I move the cursor to the place in the document where I want to paste, then try to paste using Ctrl-V, nothing appears to happen. However, the paste function has indeed pasted the text as soon as I pressed Ctrl-V. The problem is that it has pasted all the buffer text into a randomly chosen location within the document.
The randomly selected paste location is often fairly close to the place where I want to paste the text, and often a few paragraphs above. But it can also be absolutely anywhere else, above or below the place where the cursor is located. To find that randomly placed text, I can use the search function, or (better yet) press the undo function keys (Ctrl-Z).
If I do not immediately remove the randomly placed text, it will remain in the document. Thus, many of my documents on the internet have been partially ruined, and contain some nonsense words, sentences and paragraphs. For example, if I was cutting and pasting the word "existentialism," and somewhere else in the document there was the clause "the dog bit the postman," then the paste function might randomly place the buffer right in the middle of another word like this: "the dog bit the postmexistentialisman."
Whenever I see nothing happen after pressing Ctrl-V, I know the paste Function has placed the buffer text into a randomly selected location somewhere else in the document. Of course, I cannot see where it has done this, since It will paste the text absolutely anywhere in the document, but leave the cursor exactly where I put it in the first place.
But if nothing happens when I press Ctrl-V, I do not press Ctrl-V again. Instead, I press Ctrl-Z (undo). That will remove the buffer text which was randomly pasted somewhere in the document, then move my cursor to that particular spot. Of course, after this I need to return to where I was originally working. Since many of my documents are more than 50,000 words, trying to find the place where I was originally working in the document can be very time consuming and frustrating.
One thing that sometimes helps is if I click and double-click about ten times on the spot where I want to paste something. When I do that, chances of successfully pasting the buffer text at the cursor's location are better, although still not certain.
This bug is very frequent, occurring about half the time I use the cut and paste function.
But now another similar problem has arisen. Before I updated to 8.04 (Hardy), the search function (Ctrl-F) would never randomly paste what was in the copy buffer into a randomly selected place in the document. However, I have seen the search function do this twice while I was using the Ubuntu Text Editor. I have not seen it do this more than twice, although it may have done so without my catching it. And I have not yet seen the search function do this in the Open Office word processor. But I have confirmed that it has done this in the Text Editor at least twice.
I don't know if this problem can be fixed, except by getting a new computer, since I suspect that it might be a hardware problem. But if there is something I can do about it, I sure would appreciate some help. This bug has really caused some serious problems at times.
Thanks. Greg.
This sounds like a bug in the windowing system rather than a bug in the kernel as you are only seeing issues with cut-n-paste. From your description I cannot tell which applications or even which variant of ubuntu you are running so am unable to push this to a sensible package. Could you let us know which application you are using here?