Re: mouse problems after switching to Woody
* sam (sam@mail.wdn.net) spake thusly:
>
> Rather than go into a lot of detail on my problems, I would prefer to get
> a reliable reference to a comprehensive discussion about the installation
> and trouble shooting of mice. I am currently using Woody (Debian 3.0), a
> ps/2 modem, AMD 500 Mhz cpu -- in other words, nothing very unusual or
> fancy.
>
>
> If no good reference exists, can some computer science or engineering
> instructor suggest this topic to one of their more adventurous students as
> a term project, or even as a Masters thesis. By the way, I don't
> understand why many exchanges on the Debian lists refer to unpredictable
> mouse problems from unknown sources: Are mice and their software really
> stochastic machines, or are those people merely as ignorant as I am
> (which is very)?
Yes.
You have serial, bus, PS2 and USB mice, that's different hardware.
( => different drivers, of different quality. E.g. USB support in
linux is not as mature as, say, serial port support, so here's one
potential source of problems.)
On top of that, you have a bunch of different communication protocols
for (at least) serial mice, and mouse driver has to understand them all.
If that's not complicated enough, X and console use different mouse
drivers, and if you want to use the mouse on both, you have to make
them play nice with each other.
Last, but not least, you have mouse manufacturers who can't get the
protocol right half the time (the other half wants to use a super-
secret proprietary extensions to the protocol).
On a positive note, PS2 mice, 2.4 kernel with devfs,
CONFIG_MOUSE=y
CONFIG_PSMOUSE=y
and /dev/misc/psaux as mouse device works fine with gpm or X
(but not both: maybe it does, but I haven't tried.)
Dima (did that help?)
--
Tlaloc: What was Elrond's second name?
Gruber: Hubbard
-- <ahbou=3C69EB63.A7C431F4@last.com>
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