Ubuntu and the clipboard

[Simon]

I switched to Ubuntu (and Linux as a whole) about 7-8 months ago, and
needless to say, I'll never go back (you know what place I'm talking
about).

However, one thing has irritated me from the first day. It seemed as if
many times, when I copied something (using ctrl+c) and then attempted to
paste it, the clipboard would be empty. Of course I can slip every now
and then and hit the wrong combination, but what I was used to before
Ubuntu was probably a 99% success rate, whereas now, I seemed to lose
the data probably two times out of three.

Then finally tonight, I think I might have found the problem. I needed
to print about 50 lines of text from a website, but since I also need to
make notes on top of the printout (by hand), I just copied it and went
to paste it into OOo and change the line spacing. Again, there was
nothing to be pasted. A sigh and an attempt to go back and copy it
again, just to find I'd closed the browser window. And I realised that
that was happening quite often. In fact, almost every time. So I tested
it; every time I copy something out of one window and then close it, it
will not be pastable (is that a word? lol). The only exception (and I'll
admit I haven't done an insane amount of testing) seems to be gnome
applications, such as Gedit. Kate and FF won't carry over the data after
they've been closed.

So is this because they're not 100% native to Gnome? I didn't go into
KDE yet and see if Kate and Kwrite would carry their data properly. 

What, if any, would be a possible solution to this (yes, I know I could
just leave the window open, but old habits die hard)?

Of course this is a minor annoyance, but it is indeed a reoccurring one
and one I've never had to put up with before, so I'd be very happy to
find a way around it.

Oh, and I just realised this became much longer than I thought, sorry
about that, but hopefully someone takes the time to read through it.

Best regards,
Simon