Scroll Wheel is Erratic

General system Kernel & Hardware
1

I have a pretty cheap USB wireless mouse which looks a bit like an Apple Magic 2 but its a poor knockoff. The scroll wheel has always been jerky and erratic since new, so I left it alone and used the touchpad on the laptop. I tried the mouse on the iMac a while back and it does the same jerky up/down behaviour. Strangely though, it scrolls through workspaces on Gnome smoothly. Now I am moving to a desktop, the mouse becomes more important because the scroll bar is narrow and my eyesight ain’t what it used to be.

I followed the arch wiki and installed imwheel, but I need a little help on the parameters in the conf file.

Should I be looking for a different mouse that is known to scroll smoothly? If so, some models. Should I be looking for a trackpad? I never heard of a Linux trackpad, as they all seem to be for M$ Windows. Although the iMac has a Wacom tablet which I tried a while back and its plug’n’play on :enos: - Its a bit big for my crowded desk, and wife would never let me have the tablet since I gifted the iMac to her a while back. Still, a recommendation on a small trackpad would be useful for consideration.

here is the relevant part of libinput.

Device:           MOSART Semi. 2.4G Wireless Mouse
Kernel:           /dev/input/event5
Group:            5
Seat:             seat0, default
Capabilities:     pointer 
Tap-to-click:     n/a
Tap-and-drag:     n/a
Tap drag lock:    n/a
Left-handed:      disabled
Nat.scrolling:    disabled
Middle emulation: disabled
Calibration:      n/a
Scroll methods:   button
Click methods:    none
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles:   flat *adaptive
Rotation:         n/a

Device:           Eee PC WMI hotkeys
Kernel:           /dev/input/event9
Group:            6
Seat:             seat0, default
Capabilities:     keyboard 
Tap-to-click:     n/a
Tap-and-drag:     n/a
Tap drag lock:    n/a
Left-handed:      n/a
Nat.scrolling:    n/a
Middle emulation: n/a
Calibration:      n/a
Scroll methods:   none
Click methods:    none
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles:   n/a
Rotation:         n/a
2

Just to clarify. The supposedly problematic mouse works fine in Gnome, but not your current desktop environment? (Are you using Gnome?) Or is it that the scrolling is smooth only when scrolling through workspaces but not elsewhere?

You can do a lot of things with IMWheel; you can even define different mouse behavior for different applications with it (that’s how versatile it is).

You should probably be a bit more specific on what you are trying to accomplish with IMWheel?

Are you trying to solve the smooth scrolling issue with it? But you asked for a recommendation for a trackpad at the end?

3

It jumps around everywhere in Gnome and even as I recall in the dark days of KDE. I don’t remember this mouse ever scrolling properly on any build or DE.

Yes, I just want to solve the smooth scrolling since now I can’t workaround it with a trackpad as I have n the laptop.

Trackpad is only in case there is no solution. Also I hear some Logitech mouse models play well on Linux. I only want a stable scrolling experience. I find it very strange that the scrolling is fine on moving between workspaces vertically. That leads me to think there is nothing pyhysically damaged with the mouse, and that is why I am exploring imwheel in case it is a configuration/tweak.

I hope that clarifies it now :grinning:

4

So the mouse behaved erratically on every OS you tried it on? MacOS and Linux?

5

Let’s start with the most obvious setting to tweak—scrolling sensitivity.

What happens if you try to decrease sensitivity?

6

One thing that can make mouse behave erratically is dust.
Then cleaning the mouse carefully inside and outside may help.

7

Maybe you need to try mesa-git

8

Yes,
I had the mouse in a drawer for a few years, but the scroll was always like that since new, which I just put down to cheap knockoffs.