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spong
Asked: 2010-08-18 23:19:07 +0800 CST

Thinkpad middle button scrolling

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I'm running Ubuntu on my Thinkpad T60. Is there a way to get the middle button to act like a scroll like it would when it runs Windows?

I'd like to be able to hold the middle button down and scroll down a webpage using the red button.

thinkpad laptop

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    http://www.eastwoodzhao.com/thinkpad-middle-button-scroll-ubuntu-linux-10-04-lucid-lynx/

    In short, run this: gksu gedit /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-thinkpad.conf and put this in the file:

    Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Trackpoint Wheel Emulation"
MatchProduct "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint|DualPoint Stick|Synaptics Inc. Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

    Save and restart.

    • 20

  2. Install package "gpointing-device-settings" Set options as follows:

    check "Use middle button emulation"
check "Use wheel emulation"
select button "2"
check "Enable vertical scroll"

    Screenshot

    • 17

  3. ThinkWiki has instructions on how to do this. Specifically, how to use xinput(1) to configure the TrackPoint.

    (All in all, ThinkWiki is a great resource. It's pretty much the go-to place for just about anything on running Linux on Thinkpads.)

    • 4

  4. I use the following in my AwesomeWM autostart file:

    # make the mouse work right on my thinkpad in lucid
xinput set-prop 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint' "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint' "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint' "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200

    In the default Gnome install you could write a script that runs on boot or perhaps check out if the .xinitrc or .Xresources is used. (I can't recall which is used any more)

    • 1

  5. Gpointing is a graphical application for the gnome desktop to achieve the same result ;)

    With Ubuntu install it in a terminal

    sudo apt-get install gpointing-device-settings

    or via software center "gpointing-device-settings"

    • 1

  6. In Ubuntu 14.04, these settings are in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-evdev-trackpoint.conf. It looks like this:

     # trackpoint users want wheel emulation

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier  "trackpoint catchall"
    MatchIsPointer  "true"
    MatchProduct    "TrackPoint|DualPoint Stick"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Option  "Emulate3Buttons"   "true"
    Option  "EmulateWheel"  "true"
    Option  "EmulateWheelButton"    "2"
    Option  "XAxisMapping"  "6 7"
    Option  "YAxisMapping"  "4 5"
EndSection

    To get "natural scrolling", that is, scrolling in the direction of the pointer, you can swap the YAxisMapping values to be "5 4" instead. I restarted after I swapped mine and it worked fine.

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