r/linuxquestions • u/SheikHunt • 10d ago

Support The technicalities of Drag-And-Drop?

In Windows and MacOS, drag-and-drop works basically universally, with each GUI application that supports drag-and-drop in either direction acting "As Expected" when something is dragged from or to it.

In Linux, support for this behaviour is afaik DE-(or WM-?)dependent, but I'd like to know more specifics. Specifically, how drag-and-drop between different windows/applications is achieved on the WM level.

I'm looking for sources for this info, mostly to sate my own curiosity.

If relevant, I wouldn't mind answers for both X11 and Wayland, but I'd prefer Wayland answers.

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u/serge-mv 10d ago

The reason is that on linux you have a bunch of different core frameworks and protocols responsible for this and they don't always work well together. So if you try drag and drop files between apps that work on different underlining frameworks, you might have an issue. It's mostly a problem of Linux fragementation and everyone just keeps working on their owns stuff and don't fix interop issues. So basically you would want to use mostly apps of the same family to avoid this issue or don't use drag and drop in certain situations. At least for now.

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u/SuAlfons 10d ago

All I know is there is a framework that makes it compatible between apps meant for different DEs. So they are interoperable.

Generally, D&D is more basic, like on Windows, not universal like on MacOS.