Mouse settings are misleading

Thoughts & Feedback
#1

Was configuring my mouse, stumbled at Mouse Too Wild?
6 years later, Mate mouse settings are still totally misleading and confusing.

"Acceleration" slider:

  1. Is described in documentation as "Use the slider to specify the speed at which your mouse pointer moves on your screen when you move your mouse.", which is wrong on oh so many levels.
  2. Actual setting /org/mate/desktop/peripherals/mouse/motion-acceleration is described as "Acceleration multiplier for mouse motion. A value of -1 is the system default.", much better description, so just copy/paste it to docs.
  3. As soon as you touch "Acceleration" slider, there is absolutely no way to reset it back to default -1 value, it goes on 1 to 10 scale. Which in turn gets translated to libinput "Accel Speed" ranging from -1 to +1.

"Sensitivity" slider:

  1. Is described in documentation as "Use the slider to specify how sensitive your mouse pointer is to movements of your mouse.". Uh, what?
  2. Actual setting /org/mate/desktop/peripherals/mouse/motion-threshold is described as "Distance in pixels the pointer must move before accelerated mouse motion is activated. A value of -1 is the system default.", again much more sensible, just is it in help.
  3. Same problem with slider, no way to reset to default -1 value.

And big the elephant in room: in order to change actual pointer speed in modern Linux stack, you have to mess with MOUSE_DPI libinput setting.
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/normalization-of-relative-motion.html
Mate gives you zero control over actual speed, acceleration controls are nothing but band-aid.

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#2

Yes, yes and yes :slight_smile:
And besides the xinputdriver nothing has changed since then
Also read this:

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#3

Well, mouse DPI can be changed by dropping relevant mymouse.hwdb file in /etc/udev/hwdb.d/

# Logitech M705 (marathon mouse)
mouse:usb:v046dp101b:name:Logitech M705:
mouse:usb:v046dp101b:name:Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:101b:
mouse:usb:v046dpc52b:name:Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:101b:
 MOUSE_DPI=800@125

And then reload udevadm and check if it got applied:

udevadm hwdb --update
udevadm trigger /dev/input/eventX
udevadm info /dev/input/eventX

OK, Mate can't configure that, but at least don't mislead users that it can!

Worst thing is that it's so easy to screw you mouse settings by touching sliders without ANY way to reset it to default, other than system tools like dconf-editor.

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#4

Thanks, I didn't knew that. Good to know that there is another workaround.
Is this the way to change mouse dpi since the transition to libinput ?

The thing that worries me the most is that the info how it should be done (by udevadm) is very hard to find if you don't know the low level ins and outs of libinput or even don't know that libinput is a thing nowadays.

Take me, for instance. I'm a reasonable seasoned user but besides the 'coordination matrix' of 'xinput set-prop' I couldn't find any other way to adjust the speed. Your tip of using hwdb is, for me personally, very useful.
You are absolutely right that the mouse-settings-gui needs a revision :slight_smile:

It would probably a good idea to file a bug against mate-desktop about this issue (link below)

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