What you should not expect when switching to Linux

DarkDuck ^ | 17 September 2015 | Dmitry (Darkduck)

[ShadowAce]

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu (I believe), which itself is based on Debian.

All of my experience (with one exception) has been with Red Hat and Fedora, which are markedly different than that branch. I've never seen an issue with mice. Can you give me more details, errors you are seeing, related entries in /var/log/messages when you plug them in? I may be able to assist, but I cannot guarantee it.

[ducttape45]

Ok, when I get into that directory, what am I looking for exactly? There are many log files there. Which one should I look at for information?

[Bikkuri]

Lol, he wasn’t calling you a troll.. he was referencing the post you had read about changing the kernels. ;)

[Bikkuri]

Which Mint are you using, and have you tried a different brand (mouse)?
I am on android ATM, and have no PC to test, for the time being... would help more if I could :/

[ducttape45]

I'm using Linux Mint 17.2.

I've tried two different wireless mice (Logitech) and one wired mouse (generic). Each of them do the same thing in that they freeze up every few minutes and stays that way for about 15-20 seconds.

Something else I noticed is that when the mouse freezes up the CPU cooling fan speeds up. Not sure what to make of that but when that happens in Windows it usually means the system is processing more information than normal and it speeds up to cool the CPU.

When I'm working in Linux, however, I'm never doing anything that should cause the CPU cooling fan to speed up.

[ducttape45]

Opps, my bad.

Sorry ShadowAce!

[ShadowAce]

In the terminal:

1. cd /var/log
2. grep mouse messages

Let me know if there is any output, if so, paste it here.

[Stentor]

I ran Lubuntu on a Dell netbook. Worked fine. I have Elementary OS on it now. Works better. It actually runs Youtube without stuttering on both. The original Windows 7 Starter addition never worked out of the box. 1 gig.

Lubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet)

elementary os

UNetbootin from Sourceforge.

[Bikkuri]

Cinn, KDE, Mate, Xfce,?
Also, could be hardware conflict (no promise there, but did have similar issue when 1 of my ram modules wasn’t connecting well.. I just unseated and reseated all of them several times to allow them good contact again).

[Pelham]

linux bkmk

[roamer_1]

I have Elementary OS on it now.

Thanks for that - I was considering Elementary, tho all of my media boxen are going Linux, as well as my DMZ'd server, and I had hoped to normalize around Mint... I am currently gonna try full blown Mint/Cinnamon on that Asus EEE PC, just to see... But I just might be going Ubuntu/Unity on the Media boxen anyway (maybe better presented for use on the TVs), so at that point, I won't have normalization anyway.

One way or anther, I'll give Elementary a go. : )

thx again.

[ducttape45]

Cinnamon.

I also wondered about USB 3 and Linux. Is it supported? I can use the USB 3 port with no problems, it seems, but I wondered about that too.

[ducttape45]

I’ll check this when I get home from work today.

[ShadowAce]

I also wondered about USB 3 and Linux. Is it supported? I can use the USB 3 port with no problems, it seems, but I wondered about that too.

Yeah, it's supported. I have a Logitech wired mouse plugged into a USB 3.0 port on my laptop with no issues.

[ducttape45]

I just checked (sorry this took so long).

There is nothing called grep mouse messages anywhere in that directory.

[ShadowAce]

No--grep is the command name

It searches for a string in a file

So typing in "grep mouse messages" at the command line will search for the word "mouse" in the file "messages" within the /var/log directory.

[ducttape45]

Hahahahahahaha, let's face it, this just goes to show how "Linux challenged" I really am!

I'll be back............

[ducttape45]

ok, next question, what’s “terminal?” Where do I type in the grep command? Sorry, I really am not good at this Linux thing.

[ducttape45]

Hang on, hang on, I found the terminal window, or rather, I figured out how to access it.

bkelley@bkelley50-PC /var/log $ grep mouse message

grep: messages: No such file or directory

I take it that's not a good thing

[ShadowAce]

Hmm. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Do you know which distro you are using? I'm coming from a Red Hat-centric point of view, so things may be in different places.