Hey again! In the next version you’ll be able to create a pattern variant by hovering over it in the grid and pressing Ctrl + D instead of Alt + Click.
Also note that when dragging a pattern you can press Alt at any point to drop it as a variant instead. So if click and dragging, and then pressing Alt works for you, that is something you can use now already!
And lastly, maybe this can help if you’d rather disable this behavior on the system level: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/18wlx8i/disabling_alt_click_hotkey/