GNOME Clipboard Daemon is a program that keeps the content of your X clipboard in memory, so the clipboard will not get lost even after you close the application from which you copied. It is a daemon - it has no GUI. You start it and it will run in the background and Just Work(tm). Example: 1. Start AbiWord. 2. Type in 'hello world'. Select everything and click Copy. 3. Close AbiWord. 4. Start gedit. 5. Click Paste. Normally nothing will happen. But if GNOME Clipboard Daemon is running, pasting will work.