Tapping upper right corner no longer produces middle click in Karmic

[Mattias Bengtsson]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Bottom Right corner produces right click (as usual) but top right corner does nothing. I've been googling and serching for bugs in Launchpad but haven't found anything indicating that this is by design. It sure migh be though. :)

Anyhow, when i run "synclient RTCornerButton=2" i get the old behaviour back.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Oct 9 18:40:33 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Lsusb:
 Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
 Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
MachineType: MICRO-STAR INT'L CO.,LTD MS-1012
Package: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.1.2-1ubuntu6
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   3.3V 16-bit PC Card
   Subdevice 0 (function 0) bound to driver "sdricoh_cs"
 Socket 1:
   3.3V 32-bit PC Card
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-12-generic root=UUID=4a6b6158-0461-431a-b79a-64f6fc1db267 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-12.41-generic
RelatedPackageVersions:
 xserver-xorg 1:7.4+3ubuntu5
 libgl1-mesa-glx 7.6.0-1ubuntu1
 libdrm2 2.4.14-1ubuntu1
 xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.9.0-1ubuntu1
 xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.12.99+git20090825.fc74e119-0ubuntu3
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-12-generic i686
XorgConf: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'
dmi.bios.date: 06/24/2005
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A1012IMS VB.80
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Tag
dmi.chassis.type: 11
dmi.chassis.vendor: MICRO-STAR INT'L CO.,LTD
dmi.chassis.version: N/A
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvrA1012IMSVB.80:bd06/24/2005:svnMICRO-STARINT'LCO.,LTD:pnMS-1012:pvr0121:cvnMICRO-STARINT'LCO.,LTD:ct11:cvrN/A:
dmi.product.name: MS-1012
dmi.product.version: 0121
dmi.sys.vendor: MICRO-STAR INT'L CO.,LTD
fglrx: Not loaded
system:
 distro: Ubuntu
 architecture: i686kernel: 2.6.31-12-generic

[Percy Leonhardt (p3y)]

I can confirm this on an Acer 5920. According to https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/386017 this is an intentional behavior.

The workaround mentioned here and in the link above does not work for me. Synclient -l shows

RTCornerButton = 0

and running the workaround results in

RTCornerButton = 2

as expected but it still does not work.

[Narj (narj)]

Losing "middle click" is hurting my productivity - please put it back. X11 applications traditionally assume the presence of three buttons and as such, it often makes things difficult or imposssible to lose the presence of the middle button. At a minimum, it means that one can't paste the selection. I can understand people coming from other operating systems not noticing the loss of this functionality: after all, if you don't know it's there, you don't miss it. However, on Unix, it is like losing one of the keys on the keyboard because it "confuses" people from an operating system which doesn't have it.

Yes, I can move my hand to the separate mouse buttons, but that takes time, and for every click, it adds up. Yes, I can also reconfigure Synaptics using the settings above, though it's hardly obvious. If you really must disable middle click, please at least add an easy configuration option (perhaps in the "mouse preferences" control panel) to turn this back on.

[Franko Burolo (fburolo)]

I agree with Narj. This default behaviour hurts my productivity, too. And I felt very unconfortable using my touchpad until I found the above solution... Which is not quite an obvious way to do it, for most people.

And I must say I am quite bored with this new tendency in Ubuntu of considering the average user an idiot. First they disabled ctrl-alt-backspace combo by default, now they disabled the scroll-to-change-workspace feautre, along with this one. What's next? Seems like that, instead of teaching new users, somebody here is trying to conform GNU/Linux to their ignorance.

Make the defaults you want, all right, but at least give us a more handy way to change it back the way we used to like it.

[Łukasz Halman (lukasz-halman)]

I agree too. I don't understand this change. It's counterproductive. Middle click has been very important mouse action in linux. It's not windows nor mac. We need 3 buttons.

Sure you can press left and right button at once and generate "middle" click. But it requires two fingers to acomplish that. It hurts productivity.

If some new linux users feel that using touchpad for moving pointer around, scrolling and having 3 types of click is too much.. Ok. I can understand that, but lets give them option to turn some of it off then.

Lets not dumb down ubuntu this way, please.

[Gursimran singh (simar)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. If you could test the current Ubuntu stable version (Maverick), this would help us a lot. If you can test it, and it is still an issue, we would appreciate if you could upload updated logs by running apport-collect <bug #>, and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[bugbot (bugbot)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.