Mouse Pointer Speed
After updating the office desktop to Slackware 15.0, the mouse pointer speed was too fast when using the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE). Almost uncontrollable. This was inconsistent across different desktop environments (DEs), but seemed to be common to some degree.
A related annoyance in TDE was that occasionally any simple mouse pointer movement on virtual desktop 1 abruptly slammed the focus into virtual desktop 2. No mouse button actions were enabled, the mouse was nowhere near the panel workspace switcher/pager or a desktop border, that latter of which are disabled anyway.
Another related annoyance was in KDE System Settings there were no traditional options to configure the mouse, such as double-click speed. Also in KDE, clicking a panel taskbar button often needed to be done more than once and with slow firmness to finally activate the task.
Snooping around the web indicated the root cause might be Slackware 15.0 moving to libinput as the default rather than the traditional evdev. Some experimenting found that renaming two Xorg configuration files resolved the problems.
cd /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/
mv 40-libinput.conf 40-libinput.conf.bak
mv 91-keyboard-layout-libinput.conf 91-keyboard-layout-libinput.conf.bak
Renaming the two files basically disables libinput.
Likely the same result could be accomplished by removing the libinput package.
Searching the web indicates many people struggling with libinput.
After eight years or so, seems libinput is not fully developed and is not ready for prime time. Seems that libinput is mostly a Wayland thing, which is mostly a “don’t give a hoot about Xorg users” thing. Seems libinput mostly targets laptops and trackpads and desktop users can just go away.
That software changes and evolves is one thing. To render unfinished software as the default is quite another. Especially unfinished software designed by geeks for geeks.
Newer is not always better.
Problem solved but Yet Another Example why updating computers is so frustrating.
Something always breaks. Always.
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: Slackware
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