Context I recently switched to using an X1 Carbon (2nd Gen) with Lubuntu 16.04 LTS as my main work machine. I’d been wanting to do this for a while, but now circumstances are such that I HAD to. It’s working out well so far. Everything worked out of the box. Installation was a breeze with a live USB. I did have trouble booting with a USB created on OSX, but that’s another post.
I connected an external mouse, which was too sensitive. I wanted to slow it down. Hunting through the Preferences I didn’t see a GUI way of accomplishing this. So this is how you slow down an external mouse using the command line.
Edit: I realized there was a GUI option to do all of this through Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse.
To get a list of input devices
$ xinput --list --short
Which will output something like this:
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint id=15 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ MOSART Semi. 2.4G Wireless Mouse id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Integrated Camera: Integrated C id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons id=16 [slave keyboard (3)]
Now you can view and set properties for any of those devices. I need to change properties on the wireless mouse, which has an ID of 9.
$ xinput --list-props 9
Can also do:
$ xinput --list-props "MOSART Semi. 2.4G Wireless Mouse"
Either of those will output a list of properties like this:
Device 'MOSART Semi. 2.4G Wireless Mouse':
Device Enabled (142): 1
Coordinate Transformation Matrix (144): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
Device Accel Profile (269): 0
Device Accel Constant Deceleration (270): 2.000000
Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration (271): 1.000000
Device Accel Velocity Scaling (272): 10.000000
Device Product ID (260): 1578, 16642
Device Node (261): "/dev/input/event5"
Evdev Axis Inversion (273): 0, 0
Evdev Axes Swap (275): 0
Axis Labels (276): "Rel X" (152), "Rel Y" (153), "Rel Horiz Wheel" (266), "Rel Vert Wheel" (268)
Button Labels (277): "Button Left" (145), "Button Middle" (146), "Button Right" (147), "Button Wheel Up" (148), "Button Wheel Down" (149), "Button Horiz Wheel Left" (150), "Button Horiz Wheel Right" (151), "Button Side" (264), "Button Extra" (265), "Button Unknown" (263), "Button Unknown" (263), "Button Unknown" (263), "Button Unknown" (263)
Evdev Scrolling Distance (278): 1, 1, 1
Evdev Middle Button Emulation (279): 0
Evdev Middle Button Timeout (280): 50
Evdev Middle Button Button (281): 2
Evdev Third Button Emulation (282): 0
Evdev Third Button Emulation Timeout (283): 1000
Evdev Third Button Emulation Button (284): 3
Evdev Third Button Emulation Threshold (285): 20
Evdev Wheel Emulation (286): 0
Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes (287): 0, 0, 4, 5
Evdev Wheel Emulation Inertia (288): 10
Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout (289): 200
Evdev Wheel Emulation Button (290): 4
Evdev Drag Lock Buttons (291): 0
Each property also has an id, which is given in the parentheses, like 142, 144 etc.
Each property also has a value which is the number after the :.
You can change any of the properties like so:
xinput --set-prop <id> <property number> <value>
So in my case, it would be:
xinput --set-prop 9 270 2.5