when the monitor is rotated to a portrait orientation using gnome-display-properties (changing the rotation dropdown), and then i physically rotate my laptop, any connected usb mice then move correctly across the portrait screen- there are no issues with rotation for external mice. however, ubuntu (maverick at least) does not account for the fact that if you physically rotate your monitor, then you're obviously going to need to physically rotate a laptop's touchpad as well and thus the internal touchpad does not properly work when the laptop's monitor is in a portrait mode- up on the rotated touchpad = left, etc
not sure of what package the bug is in - probably x.org
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: ubuntu-desktop 1.207
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-28.50-generic 2.6.35.11
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-28-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Jun 21 08:52:53 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
PATH=(custom, user)
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntu-meta
xfree86- driver- synaptics maybe?