Ubuntu Hacks

Chapter 5. X11

Hacks 47-53

The X Window System (X11) is the basis of Ubuntu’s user interface. X11 is responsible for managing your keyboard, mouse, or touchpad, and also takes care of the hardware acceleration features required by 3-D applications such as games. It’s where you spend most of your time, so it’s important to get it configured just right.

This chapter will help you customize X11 to work exactly the way you want it to. Although nearly every mouse, keyboard, or touchpad will work right out of the box with Ubuntu, you can use the X11 configuration file and some related utilities to get a lot more out of them. If you want to tune X11 to take advantage of all the acceleration features offered by your graphics adapter, spread your desktop across multiple screens, or get your fonts looking just right, the hacks in this chapter will help you out.

Configure Multibutton Mice

Seven buttons, a tilt/scroll wheel, and who knows what else? Find out how to put all those bells and whistles to good use.

Gamers love mice with more buttons than the Space Shuttle because the extra buttons can be mapped to provide quick access to common functions, but getting them working under Linux can be a bit tricky.

Open the Xorg configuration file at /etc/X11/xorg.conf in a text editor (for example, using the command sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf) and look for a stanza labelled InputDevice. If your computer is a laptop with a touchpad, it may have several InputDevice entries, so make sure you find the one ...