[SOLVED] Mouse Driver Software

[HarryMonster]

Greetings, friends!
(LM 19.3 Tricia Cinnamon)

This is my second time asking for help here... if you missed the first one, I'm a Win7 refugee and WinX refuse-nik who is a Linux newbie but really excited to be here in this wonderful community. Thanks again for putting up with me!

I have a 3-button generic scroll wheel mouse; wife uses a 5-button scroll wheel mouse. When I call up the "Mouse and Touchpad" app included with LM it doesn't have any sort of mapping function to assign actions to the buttons. I opened up the Driver Manager and couldn't find a way to search for the proper driver for it. The left and right click buttons are working fine and the wheel scrolls on web pages and documents but the other buttons are all dead in Linux.

So I did some web searches and I found an old reference to a piece of software for Linux called BTNX which sounded like what I need... but the software was written in 2008 and there's no version of it to be found today on the Software Manager. I read a bunch of articles about people having trouble configuring it (as recently as 2014!) including long lists of (to me) incomprehensible terminal commands. I'm afraid to try it.

What I'd really like is simply to find a simple driver or app that will allow me to use and configure all our mouse buttons. I'd like to be able to get it from our Software Manager or Driver Manager so that it won't mess up my system too. And while I'm add it, I'd like it to weed my flower beds and improve my gas mileage. Am I asking too much?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer!
- = HM = -

[HAWR]

Hello HarryMonster,

I have never dealt with it myself, but I think the following page can help you:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Input

[HarryMonster]

Hello, HAWR

I followed your link and read through the page there until my eyes glazed over. Then I had a snack, came back and read it again. I don't think it will help me do what I want to do. I have no idea what codes to use to install the desired actions on my particular input device button configuration. It seems like a really round-about way to configure a common wheel mouse.

I know I'm no longer in the stinky MS Windows world, but really, it should be a lot easier to do this in Linux than by spending hours putting codes into the terminal and manually editing configuration files. While I can probably spend some time typing codes and eventually get it working (because I'm nerdy) I'd like to be able to have people like my wife and neighbors do it themselves by clicking on some little configuration app the way they did it in Windows. Less risk of goofing something up that way too. Somewhere in the Linux world there must be someone who has a program for this, especially with gamers and others using 14-button mice and exotic game controllers. It must be out there... I just can't find it.

Anyway, thanks for this lead. I'm still looking!

- = HM = -

[HAWR]

Hello HarryMonster,

I'm sorry, that I don't know a better method as this and as written above, I never used it. Hopefully someone else knows another method or a simpler usage of xinput.

[HarryMonster]

No worries, HAWR! I appreciate your effort!

[CapraFan]

Perhaps this might help?

https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/map-mouse-on-linux/

[HarryMonster]

Perhaps this might help?

Hi, CapraFan, and thank you!

I did see this in my wandering exploration around the Internet during one of my searches. It wants me to modify the xorg.conf file from the root to turn on a button by using another utility to tell me what the button number is because there's some confusing order to them. Eeek! Even if I manage to do this and get my other mouse buttons turned on, I wouldn't be able to define that button to be what I wanted it to be using this. It rapidly gets complicated with mapping keystrokes and that sort of thing.

I'm still hoping there's a better, easier way. As much as I'm glad to be away from MS and Windows, it was trivially simple to do this thing on that OS. There must be some nice Linux version of the mouse control center or some way to download a special driver and play with the settings.

Yesterday I was really happy to find a program called GreenWithEnvy to replace my old MSI Afterburner program which I use to control the fans on my NVidia graphics card. It took some fiddling with some files and a while to figure out that it can't be found in the Software Manager unless you look for it as "GWE" but I eventually got it to work. That gives me a lot of hope! I know there are a lot of clever programmers out there making the Linux world better for hardware compatibility.

If some clever people came up with GWE then I'm sure someone must also have a cool app that I can use to set up my mouse buttons or change them on the fly. I use my middle mouse button AS a "middle button" in programs like Blender, but when reading on the web I like to use it to set a scrolling tool, and when I'm looking at drawings or schematics I use the middle button to call up a magnifier. It used to take me a couple of seconds to reconfigure it. I should be able to switch its function at will without having to open the terminal and program codes into a file that doesn't want to let me change it.

I hope I don't sound too whiny. I haven't given up yet! I'll keep looking and let everyone know what I find. I sincerely appreciate everyone willing to offer me help and advice.

- = HM = -

[murray]

I spent a bit of time investigating this when I wanted to get the extra buttons on my Logitech mouse working. I read https://askubuntu.com/questions/152297/ ... tech-mouse and https://blog.hanschen.org/2009/10/13/mo ... xbindkeys/ and managed to get it working how I wanted.

You're correct, it's certainly not as easy as it is in Windows where I would have used Logitech software to do this.

[HarryMonster]

I spent a bit of time investigating this when I wanted to get the extra buttons on my Logitech mouse working. I read https://askubuntu.com/questions/152297/ ... tech-mouse and https://blog.hanschen.org/2009/10/13/mo ... xbindkeys/ and managed to get it working how I wanted.

You're correct, it's certainly not as easy as it is in Windows where I would have used Logitech software to do this.

Hi, Murray

Thank you for these links. I appreciate your help!

I spent some time reading both of these links to let it all sink into my old brain and finally decided to jump in with both feet and just try it.
1) Installed x11-utils, xbindkeys, and xautomation. No problem.
2) Ran xev with appropriate modifiers to map my mouse buttons. Again, no problem. Xev reported that the middle button (pressing down on the scroll wheel on this mouse) is button 2, or b:2. Logical, since the left click is b:1 and right click is b:3. Also found that scrolling up is b:4 and scrolling down is b:5. Interesting.
3) Created the .xbindkeysrc file in my home directory as instructed. Once more, no problem.
4) Finally, I opened the new file to edit and add in my keybind... and ran into trouble. The line I need to add should be something like

"xte 'what-the-button-does' "
b:2

My problem is, I don't know how to tell it what the button should do. For my middle button in Windows/Chrome a little scroll icon would show up on the screen, and moving the mouse slightly up or down would then allow the screen to scroll continuously until the button was pressed again. It's really convenient for reading long webpages or books online. What is the xte command for that? I've been looking and haven't found it yet. I tried 'mouseclick 2' and other guesses and they didn't do it. I don't know the keystrokes for toggling that scroll tool on and off. Still looking.

This may yet get me there! I'm sure I'll eventually solve this with everyone's help.

- = HM = -

[HarryMonster]

Update: Still haven't figured out how to make the wheel button (middle click) work.

Using the xte line in .xbindkeysrc allows me to put in any keystroke combo, like ctrl-shift-F7 or the like, but I don't know the magic combo to get the autoscroll icon to toggle on and off in Chrome/Chromium. I believe that's what I really need at this point and I can't figure it out.

I found some add-in extensions for Chrome that will do slow scrolling, but they're clunky and somewhat difficult to control on the fly. They also won't do sideways scrolling. Better than nothing, but I'm hoping to find a simpler solution.

I checked on another Windows machine to see how b:2 was programmed. All it said in the mouse setup was "default middle click." Tried variants of 'middle_click' on the xte line and still no luck. It appears to only want keyboard combos. That Windows machine also had other nice options for the wheel button including "magnify" which my wife uses on her machine. A web search didn't give me any useful leads on how to translate either of those into a keyboard shortcut.

If anyone has more suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks again for following along.

- = HM = -

[HAWR]

Hello HarryMonster,

your thread brought me a new insight in the functionality of may old-fashioned two button + wheel mouse: by chance I just found out that the mouse wheel click has a copy and paste function. Highlight something, place the cursor anywhere or in another application, click the mouse wheel and the selected text is inserted. It also works in/with the terminal. Maybe you have also that function without knowing it

[lsemmens]

I have a 5 button rodents that "just work". That said, the wheel click, operates as a double click, the extra buttons work as forward and backward in my browsers. I have not attempted to re-map them in any way. They are all "be" branded mice (i.e. no name, but others should work like that as well). Unless you can convince the manufacturers of such devices to develop for Linux, often it is "hit and miss" as to what works and what doesn't.

[murray]

My problem is, I don't know how to tell it what the button should do. For my middle button in Windows/Chrome a little scroll icon would show up on the screen, and moving the mouse slightly up or down would then allow the screen to scroll continuously until the button was pressed again. It's really convenient for reading long webpages or books online. What is the xte command for that?

I know exactly what you mean about the little scroll icon that lets you scroll the page continuously, my Windows PC at work operates like this.

On my LM PC at home I've left the scroll-wheel at the default setting (copying selected text) and I set up the two side buttons to do a Close Tab (Ctrl + W) and Back (Alt + left arrow).

I'm not sure what you'd put into the .xbindkeysrc to get it to do what you want. I've found the XBindKey website which has some info on how it works and examples: http://www.nongnu.org/xbindkeys/xbindkeys.html

[HarryMonster]

...found out that the mouse wheel click has a copy and paste function. ... Maybe you have also that function without knowing it

Hi again, HAWR

I tried to use that function and it didn't work. Then I thought, "Doh! I need to take out the .xbindkeysrc command!" So I edited the file to remove it, rebooted, and sure enough my mouse wheel button does the copy/paste thing! How funny.

It was very kind of the Linux Mint gang to let us know about this hidden gem, eh? Some programmer in the original Ubuntu group probably thought it was a nifty thing to have and made it the default. Cute.

I still want to see if I can figure out how to get my scroll tool back though. Thanks for the tip!

I have been using the Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V (with or with out the Shift key) for decades; it's almost reflex for me. So I don't really see much need for this to be on my wheel mouse button. It doesn't save me that much effort, but if I can't reprogram the button, maybe I'll use it that way.
- = HM = -

[HarryMonster]

I have a 5 button rodents that "just work". That said, the wheel click, operates as a double click, the extra buttons work as forward and backward in my browsers. I have not attempted to re-map them in any way. They are all "be" branded mice (i.e. no name, but others should work like that as well). Unless you can convince the manufacturers of such devices to develop for Linux, often it is "hit and miss" as to what works and what doesn't.

I have a 5-button mouse on another machine I'll be converting over to Linux soon. I wonder how it will behave? My current 2-button plus wheel/button cheap-o mouse is made by Insignia... might be a Walmart brand or something. In my mind it's a "miss" with this middle button issue, but otherwise it works smoothly.

I doubt we can convince many manufacturers to develop Linux software for their devices. They probably don't see the market as worth their effort. That's a real shame. If I could find a nice mouse out there with a good Linux configuration driver, I'd buy it! It would be worth it to have something made to be useful for us in Linux rather than struggling to make hardware optimized for Windows work the way we want it to.

- = HM = -

[HarryMonster]

I know exactly what you mean about the little scroll icon that lets you scroll the page continuously, my Windows PC at work operates like this.

On my LM PC at home I've left the scroll-wheel at the default setting (copying selected text) and I set up the two side buttons to do a Close Tab (Ctrl + W) and Back (Alt + left arrow).

I'm not sure what you'd put into the .xbindkeysrc to get it to do what you want. I've found the XBindKey website which has some info on how it works and examples: http://www.nongnu.org/xbindkeys/xbindkeys.html

Hi, Murray

I didn't realize how much I'd gotten used to that little scroll tool. I'm really spoiled by it. I can use the PgUp/PgDn keys on the keyboard or keep reaching for the mouse wheel to scroll, but that smooth auto-scrolling feature is so sweet for long documents. As I mentioned above, there are some Chrome plug-ins or add-ons that do scrolling, but they're clunky to use, the speed is difficult to adjust on the fly, and they end up frustrating me more than just scrolling manually with the wheel.

If only there was a stroke like the Ctrl-W or Alt-left arrow keystroke for me to put into that .xbindkeysrc file! That's my Holy Grail at the moment. If I can find out what toggles that tool on and off, I'll just program my button with it. I did check out the website you linked -- thanks for that -- and I couldn't find what I was looking for.

I'm old, stubborn, and optimistic. So I'm going to keep after this. Not giving up yet!

- = HM = -

[HarryMonster]

Hi, everyone

I went back and looked again at some work-arounds and revisited the web looking for more clues. In an article I read it said that an extension called AutoScroll was made specifically for Linux and Mac users who didn't have the same scroll tool as the Microsoft crowd. I tried it and it does work with my mouse wheel button.

After playing with it I think it's as close as I'm going to get to a solution. Since it's a Chrome extension I won't have the autoscroll feature on PDFs and other documents on my computer but I can live with that. Most of the time I used the scroll tool for reading long web articles. That's where I needed it (and missed it) the most. This extension is my answer for that.

I'm going to mark this one as [SOLVED].

As ever, my sincere gratitude and appreciation to all of you. I'm so happy to be a part of this supportive community!

All the best,
- = HM = -

[Beerislife]

I use a Logitech (Logicool) TrackMan Marble and one of these works for me, been a while so don't remember which!

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-libinput.conf

and add:

Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Marble Mouse"
MatchProduct "Logitech USB Trackball"
Driver "libinput"
Option "ScrollMethod" "button"
Option "ScrollButton" "9"
Option "MiddleEmulation" "on"
EndSection

OR:

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf

Add:

Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Marble Mouse"
MatchProduct "Logitech USB Trackball"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "9"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection