How can I best adjust the mouse in Linux for a high-resolution display?

Question

I got a 4K (3840x2160) display, and haven't been happy with the mouse functionality in Linux. It feels aesthetically laggy / choppy, and functionally, slower to navigate. Has anyone spent time tuning velocity, acceleration, etc. on Linux for high resolution displays?

I don't believe input delay is all of the problem for me, at least not all of the problem. I'm using a GeForce 650 GTX, which is more than capable of driving the display, and the refresh rate is 30 Hz, the same as I've used for other displays. Text appearance when typing, etc. doesn't seem laggy.

My current settings are (KDE mouse module): 8x acceleration and 6 pixels pointer threshold. I guess "pointer trails" are a thing of the past (from Microsoft Windows as I recall), but I kind of feel like with this display, they'd be nice.

Answer 1

Great question. I haven't found the perfect combination of settings myself , but have been playing with the information at the following link:

https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/PointerAcceleration/

For myself,

xinput --set-prop <your device id> "Device Accel Profile" -1
xinput --set-prop <your device id> "Device Accel Velocity Scaling" 1
^^ use this to for adjust DPI, for me 1000/1000 (dpi of my mouse) = 1

This seems to work well when working with the mouse in a limited/small area of my 4K display, but moving around is another story.

Answer 2

By "It feels aesthetically laggy / choppy, and functionally, slower to navigate", does it mean the mouse pointer moves slowly, in small increments, and you have to make long movements with your hand to see small movements on the screens?

If so, what you need is to adjust the mouse speed, as in "the ratio between how many pixels the cursor moves on the screen and how far the mouse moves on the mouse pad". The cursor speed depends on mouse sensitivity, usually measured in DPI (dots per inch), the number of steps the mouse will report when it moves one inch.

Each mouse has its own DPI and it varies for each model and manufacturer. Some will have higher DPI than the others (those are preferred by gamers), and some will have hardware buttons where you can increase or decrease its DPI settings, efectivelly making it "walk faster" on the screen by moving the pointer a bigger distance in pixels when you drag the mouse.

For mice where you can't change the DPI on the hardware, each OS has settings where you can adjust the speed via software. Usually you can set it on the OS's control panel (or equivalent), but depending on the mouse, sometimes you can change it on the driver's settings dialog.