Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

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debianmintim

Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

Post by debianmintim »

Once in a while, I swap mouse hands to 'even out the wear'. I've had LMDE running as a left-handed mouse since installation a few years ago and wanted to change to right-handed. I went to the Mouse and Touchpad dialog, picked the Right radio button and.... nothing changes. Not even after a reboot.

W.T.F.

I wouldn't mind getting my hands dirty with a little vi or command line fu, but I sure can't find a simple straightforward guide to changing which file (given that the Gnome dialog does jack-squat).

I'm just running a bog-standard USB MS Wheelmouse Optical, no touchpad whatsoever, connected to a pedestrian desktop box.

Kernel: 3.11-2-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Cinnamon 2.0.14 Distro: Linux Mint Debian Edition

Anyone else experience this?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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JosephM
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Joined: Sun May 26, 2013 6:25 pm

Re: Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

Post by JosephM »

This probably isn't much help but running Cinnamon 2.8 the settings seem to work perfectly for switching right/left handed. Cinnamon 2.0 is quite old at this point.
When I give opinions, they are my own. Not necessarily those of any other Linux Mint developer or the Linux Mint project as a whole.
debianmintim

Re: Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

Post by debianmintim »

JosephM wrote:This probably isn't much help but running Cinnamon 2.8 the settings seem to work perfectly for switching right/left handed. Cinnamon 2.0 is quite old at this point.
I'm no expert at all, but isn't the point of LMDE is to be a rolling release (no real upgrades, but just continuous updates)?

So if Cinnamon needs updating, what is the proper way to do so within LMDE?
JosephM
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Level 6
Posts: 1454
Joined: Sun May 26, 2013 6:25 pm

Re: Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

Post by JosephM »

Are you on LMDE1 or 2? LMDE is no longer a rolling release based on Debian testing. LMDE2 (Betsy) is actually based on Debian Stable.
When I give opinions, they are my own. Not necessarily those of any other Linux Mint developer or the Linux Mint project as a whole.
debianmintim

Re: Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

Post by debianmintim »

JosephM wrote:Are you on LMDE1 or 2? LMDE is no longer a rolling release based on Debian testing. LMDE2 (Betsy) is actually based on Debian Stable.
Weird how hard it is to find out the answer to this. lsb_release -a returns Release 1.

Sounds like I have an entire install in my future.
killer de bug

Re: Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

Post by killer de bug »

debianmintim wrote: Sounds like I have an entire install in my future.
You have LMDE1. Its repositories have mainly not been updated since January 2014. LMDE1 will reach end of life in January 2016. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2832

Here are the instructions in order to upgrade your system to LMDE2 Betsy: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2830
I advise you to perform this step. You will get a new version of mostly everything. Including the latest version of Cinnamon (2.8.x).

Betsy is based on Debian Stable, which means you have a very solid system, and security patches are provided by Debian itself. On a regular basis, you get upgrades for the tools developed by Linux Mint team which includes Cinnamon/Nemo.
debianmintim

Re: Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

Post by debianmintim »

I did upgrade last week and was surprised how well it went, including preserving all my partitions. I do still need to fix Grub. I used a GUI Windows program that I can't recall to update Grub and preserve my dual boot access to Windows 7. It worked, sort of. The first set of options is now the old or new LMDE then after picking LMDE2, another set of options between Win 7 and LMDE2 again. Weird.
killer de bug

Re: Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

Post by killer de bug »

I guess you have selected the wrong place for the upgrade of Grub. Now it has installed it on a second partition but you still have the old one. Therefore you see it twice. :?
debianmintim

Re: Cannot change desktop mouse from left to right-handed

Post by debianmintim »

killer de bug wrote:I guess you have selected the wrong place for the upgrade of Grub. Now it has installed it on a second partition but you still have the old one. Therefore you see it twice. :?
I think that's it exactly. I did move the new one from the mbr to the root of the lmde partition, or rather I guess I added it to the second partition.
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