Adjust Linux-Mouse-Speed to Windows-Mouse-Speed

[Rhino Cracker]

This is my first post in here, so HI EVERYONE!!!

 

For some reason* I'm testing around with Linux (Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS 64-Bit) as a gaming machine.

 

While doing so, I have noticed that linux' mouse speed is drastically different from that one of windows. There is a slow base speed and a fast acceleration. I couldn't even find a checkbox for "acceleration" in its control panel, only a slide bar for mouse speed with continuous sliding and without any numbers. I also notices that the mouse sped in my favourite game Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory also is completely different (of course I've adjusted ingame "sensitivity" setting).

 

So I started googling for how to set linux mouse speed to windows mouse speed, and I've found 3 kinds of answers:

- use the slide bar.

- There is a console command to adjust base speed, acceleration threshold and acceleration scale.

- You should not wonder that a different OS has a different mouse behaviour as another OS. It is not possible to adjust linux's mouse behaviour to that one of windows. You'll get used to that (even MUCH better) one of linux.

 

I don't find these answers very satisfying. And for knowing the kind of device we are talking about (a computer mouse...), I know that it is just a "camera" detecting movement of the device on a surface, translating it to movement in dots in x- and y-direction, sending it to a pc, whose operating system then translates the raw dot input into movement in pixels on the screen. I don't know why the fuck it should not be possible to adjust the mouse behaviour of one operating system to exactly represent that one of another OS, no matter what god damn dots-to-pixels translation function the operating system uses by default.

(sorry for my upset selection of words... I am really sick of people telling me "this is not possible" and tired of showing them "it is".)

 

 

 

So, after this unsatisfying googling, I thought the best place to ask how to do so, would be in this forum. You show how to adjust mouse speeds of different games to match each other, so who else should better know how to adjust Ubuntu's mouse speed to that one of Windows as you?

 

I have a Logitech MX Revolution

with 800 DPI (The SetPoint slider is in the middle, so the driver/hardware based dpi scaling should not be applied)

and a WPS of 6/11 (I have never touched it, so it should still be 6/11 which means 1:1 dot-to-pixel translation, when I remember right).

 

 

 

Thanks in advance for your answer!

Best regards, Rhino

 

 

 

*I have a self-made gaming-pc from 2009. It has full XP support. But my new graphics card (R9 390) doesn't have XP drivers anymore. On the other hand, my motherboard doesn't have Windows 10 support, which leads into messy errors (there is an input delay; sound/video starts to stutter/microfreeze when I press a button on a PS/2 keyboard; I have a performance loss to ~60% in W:ET). In Ubuntu I have 162 fps by playing back a demo which plays with 90-104 fps in windows 10, so it could be a good replacement for that one game.

[DPI Wizard]

I haven't really noticed this, but I pretty much only use Linux through VMware and Teamviewer or RDP etc, and not for gaming.

 

As you say it shouldn't be an issue between different OS, as the base should always be X counts equals X pixels movement. Add acceleration and a multiplier/dividend on top of that, but the base should always be available as an option. I'll look into it if I find the time

[Rhino Cracker]

Thank you a lot!

[Rhino Cracker]

My distance comparison shows a very strange behaviour. Things might be a lil bit more complicated than just setting a correct sensitivity value.

 

To move the mouse cursor 1920 pixels (one full screen) from left to right, you need: 55,7mm in Windows and 51,5mm in Linux. (-7,5%)

To move the mouse cursor 1080 pixels (one full screen) from up to down, you need: 38,0mm in Windows and 43,0mm in Linux. (+13,2%)

To make a 360° turn to the right in ET, you need: 63,0mm in Windows and 14,1mm in Linux. (-77,6%)

To make a 180° turn from up to down, you need: 64,4mm in Windows and 40,7mm in Linux. (-36,8%)

 

These results make me think of I didn't manage to disable acceleration properly...

 

 

I'm using Windows 10 x64 Prof. as Windows and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS x64 as Linux.

The game I was testing was Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory (ET) with Sensitivity=3.8, cg_fov=107, r_customwidth=1920, r_customheight=1080, m_* values set to same defaults)

[Rhino Cracker]

https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/pointer-acceleration.html
This article might be the key to reach a 1:1 dot:pixel translation.
If I'm right, the flat profile and a "factor" of 1 should do the trick. Will test as soon as I'm in the mood to re-install Ubuntu (it destroys itself after days).

[SharktoothActual]

I am a Manjaro/Arch user who games frequently and I think I may have a possible solution for you! As my distro (Manjaro 17.1.1-KDE) doesn't have a sensitivity slider anywhere, I'm assuming this is a 1:1 input. It certainly feels like one to me. Anyways, read on.

You do not need to run these commands as root.

As with all versions of Linux, your mileage may vary. This was done using Manjaro/Arch 17.1.1 with KDE.

 

You will need to determine if you're using Wayland or X11 by running two commands. If you already know that you're using X11, you can skip these two commands.

The first command is:

loginctl

The second command is:

loginctl show-session <YOUR_NUMBER> -p Type

Replace <YOUR_NUMBER> with the number listed under "SESSION" that was given after running the first command. If you're running Wayland, this guide won't help you. But if you have X11, the fix is pretty simple. I borrowed this method from this website.

 

So now that we've determined you're on X11, here's how you do this:

Use the "xset" command to modify your system's mouse acceleration settings by running the following command:

xset m 0 0

If this messes everything up, don't panic! You can always replace the "0 0" with "default" to restore default settings.

A good way to apply this setting at login is to copy and paste the following code into a ".desktop" file and save that in your home folder's "./config/autostart/" folder:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Disable mouse acceleration
Exec=xset m 0 0
Type=Application

All of this information came from the Arch wiki. They explain the commands in greater detail there. I recommend taking a look if you're interested in finding out specifically what the xset command does.

 

As far as setting mouse DPI goes, that will be handled through a driver. If you're like me and have a mouse that doesn't have a Linux driver, but does have on-board profile storage, you could try plugging the mouse into a Windows PC that has the driver, setting your mouse the way you'd like, then saving the settings to your mouse's on-board storage. That, or maybe having Windows in VirtualBox would work.

 

Hopefully this guide was easy enough to follow. When I was a Linux newbie, guides with awful formatting and guides that assumed I knew some basic things were the death of me, so I'm trying not to repeat those mistakes. My apologies if this is considered reviving a dead thread. I spent a long time trying to figure out how this is done to no avail, but now that I've figured it out I really want to share it so others don't have to spend as much time as I did.

Edited January 8, 2018 by La Montagne

[Guest]

On 1/8/2018 at 10:53 AM, La Montagne said:

I am a Manjaro/Arch user who games frequently and I think I may have a possible solution for you! As my distro (Manjaro 17.1.1-KDE) doesn't have a sensitivity slider anywhere, I'm assuming this is a 1:1 input. It certainly feels like one to me. Anyways, read on.

You do not need to run these commands as root.

As with all versions of Linux, your mileage may vary. This was done using Manjaro/Arch 17.1.1 with KDE.

 

You will need to determine if you're using Wayland or X11 by running two commands. If you already know that you're using X11, you can skip these two commands.

The first command is:

loginctl

The second command is:

loginctl show-session <YOUR_NUMBER> -p Type

Replace <YOUR_NUMBER> with the number listed under "SESSION" that was given after running the first command. If you're running Wayland, this guide won't help you. But if you have X11, the fix is pretty simple. I borrowed this method from this website.

 

So now that we've determined you're on X11, here's how you do this:

Use the "xset" command to modify your system's mouse acceleration settings by running the following command:

xset m 0 0

If this messes everything up, don't panic! You can always replace the "0 0" with "default" to restore default settings.

A good way to apply this setting at login is to copy and paste the following code into a ".desktop" file and save that in your home folder's "./config/autostart/" folder:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Disable mouse acceleration
Exec=xset m 0 0
Type=Application

All of this information came from the Arch wiki. They explain the commands in greater detail there. I recommend taking a look if you're interested in finding out specifically what the xset command does.

 

As far as setting mouse DPI goes, that will be handled through a driver. If you're like me and have a mouse that doesn't have a Linux driver, but does have on-board profile storage, you could try plugging the mouse into a Windows PC that has the driver, setting your mouse the way you'd like, then saving the settings to your mouse's on-board storage. That, or maybe having Windows in VirtualBox would work.

 

Hopefully this guide was easy enough to follow. When I was a Linux newbie, guides with awful formatting and guides that assumed I knew some basic things were the death of me, so I'm trying not to repeat those mistakes. My apologies if this is considered reviving a dead thread. I spent a long time trying to figure out how this is done to no avail, but now that I've figured it out I really want to share it so others don't have to spend as much time as I did.

All this does is removes acceleration, it doesn't convert sensitivity 1 to 1 from windows over to linux..

[makojunki]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mouse_acceleration

 

this is what i use for disabling mouse accel in Manjaro. should be same 'idea' in other distros.... create and edit a file in ---> /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-mouse-acceleration.conf

 

Necro coz i was looking for this answer too.

[MacSquirrel_Jedi]

On 7/16/2022 at 3:12 PM, makojunki said:

Necro coz i was looking for this answer too.

Mouse sensitivity is different on each user environment. I was playing around this in Ubuntu 21.10 GNOME 40. 

Edited July 18, 2022 by MacSquirrel_Jedi