erratic mouse behaviour when typing too quickly
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu |
Confirmed
|
Undecided
|
Canonical Kernel Team | ||
Bug Description
I am running Ubuntu 6.06.2 LTS with all the latest updates on a Dell Inspiron D600. I've looked at the existing bugs for keyboard and mouse problems, and this doesn't seem to fit nicely into any of the existing ones.
Basically when typing, the pointer behaves as if the mouse buttons (left or right?) have been clicked. Quite often the events cause all the text typed so far to be selected, and so when the next key is pressed it causes all text to be erased - very annoying indeed! Even during typing this text so far, a right-click was sent to the area above the "Further information" text box, and "Sent to", then "Google mail" selected. After resuming typing, twice has the mouse moved smoothly (at a constant speed of about 100 pixels per second) in an up-right direction, and then after typing a few more characters in a down-left direction. I estimate it does this approximately once every one or two sentences of text. I type at a speed of between 80 to 120 words per minute, and the problem seems significantly worse when I am typing faster.
Another side effect is that once these symptoms have appears, it often seems to affect the ability to navigate the desktop correctly. i.e. i am unable to give focus to other windows, or click on certain buttons. In order to restore full mouse functionality I am having to CTRL-ALT-F1 to switch to a text console then CTRL-ALT-F7 to switch back to my X session.
Running dmesg has shown that some psmouse.c errors occured around the time the system started up, but certainly nothing shows up in any of the log files in /var/log for the period during which I have been typing this text you are reading now. dmesg output also shows nothing of significance (as far as I can interpret).
Hopefully this is enough information to get someone started on a line of questions - I shall be happy to answer and help as much as possible, and hopefully I am not alone in experiencing these symptoms.
I've been trying to switch to ubuntu from Windows XP at a frequency of about once per year ever since Hoary, and it's always been quirks such as this (also on an Inspiron 8000 and Inspiron 8100) that seem to cause it to not be viable - I really would like to see Ubuntu succeed as a contender to the desktop!
| rebroad (rebroad) wrote | #1 |
| Higa (higabyte) wrote | #2 |
| Andres Mujica (andres.mujica) wrote | #3 |
This problem was also present in a fully patched Windows XP SP2, so it seems it is not specific to ubuntu, and the possibility that it is a hardware problem should not be discounted. The workaround in this case was to disable the stick pointer and use the touchpad only. Unless anyone else has experienced this I suspect this could be considered a non-bug.