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Comment by mAritz | Hacker News Reader

The biggest issue I've faced when it comes to playing games on Linux that have good support (for example CS:GO) is that mouse handling in linux is not easy to configure and vendor mouse drivers are often atrocious if they exist at all.

Specifically for first-/third-person games this means getting the right sensitivity and disabling mouse-acceleration (or setting it in a very specific way for some hardcore quake pros supposedly).

Last time I checked, disabling mouse accelleration is a huge hassle and no working UI exists. The average gamer will not go into config files of the OS to try and find the right formula that makes their mouse move the way they expect it to.

This isn't really an important issue in normal desktop usage or point-and-click games. Thus support by linux developers is understandably lacking.

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The first thing I do after installing Linux or using a live cd is to disable mouse acceleration.

  xset m 0/1 4

I sense there is no irony in using a command line to alter a mouse attribute that could ostensibly less-cognitive-dissonantly be done via a mouse-driven GUI

It does seem unfortunately that the best method is to install the mouse on Windows somewhere and save the config to the mouse itself. This obviously requires the mouse have on-board memory, but it works at least.

Replying for anyone else who comes along. Another good command to have for these kinds of things is "xinput". It's how I configure my touchpad (surpassing the synaptics thing) and other things.

I've found it a little harder to script in ~/.xsession though for hotplug devices. Things get addressed by integer ID, not necessarily names.

This. Playing competitively on Linux is still an exercise in frustration.

Have you tried rtfm?

  man xset

Aside from the unnecessary snarkiness, here's my main reason for downvoting you:

Even somebody who is familiar with the concept of man pages would have no chance of knowing that xset is the one to look for.

Discoverability is super important. Luckily, the kind of desktops people actually use tend to have a System Settings app in which mouse acceleration can be figured.

Didcovdrability isn't great, but eg: "apropos input" suggest "man xinput" and a quick search points to acceleration along with a pointer to the "xset(1) man page".

Unfortunately it looks like the path from "apropos mouse" might be a bit more convoluted.

Totally agree. This is a problem I have in general with linux - you don't know what you don't know, and using man to find a command to do the thing you need is akin to using a dictionary to find a word to describe a definition you have.

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