You may happen to notice that if you plug a high resolution mouse into your Linux box, it may move WAY too fast! Even if your gnome acceleration and movement settings are tuned all the way down. If you are using Fedora (and even more recent versions of Ubuntu), then you are still in luck if you want to make an easy adjustment.
xinput is a utility to configure and test X input devices, and this is one of those situations where it comes in handy.
First, we need to find out what your input device is registered as. To do that, run the following:
xinput --list --short
This should give you a short run-down on the recognized devices. My system shows up with this:
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Lite-On Technology Corp. USB Multimedia Keyboard id=8 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ImPS/2 Logitech Wheel Mouse id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Microsoft Microsoft® Nano Transceiver v1.0 id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Microsoft Microsoft® Nano Transceiver v1.0 id=13 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Lite-On Technology Corp. USB Multimedia Keyboard id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Microsoft Microsoft® Nano Transceiver v1.0 id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
Here, I selected the first instance of my mouse, in this case with ID 12.
To check the current settings of your device, use the following:
xinput --list-props 12
Here, I was able to see the Device Accel Constant Deceleration setting was set to 1. This is the setting we will adjust to improve your mouse performance. Just increase this value until it suits your taste. A value between 3 and 5 is good for most people.
xinput --set-prop 12 "Device Accel Constant Deceleration" 3
And that should be it!
