Dell vs Lenovo trackpoint/nipple/trackstick mouse drivers?

Question

I have a Dell Latitude 6 series, 3rd gen, with a track-point. In windows, it feels great. In Linux, it feels kind of disappointing. The best way I can describe it is that it is too easy to move it in a straight line; if I just press left, it'll move perfectly left. In windows, the sensitivity is much more precise to subtle movements.

This means that it's hard to land the mouse right between letters, for instance.

What's interesting is that I have an external Lenovo "Thinkpad" branded keyboard with a trackstick. When I plug that in and use it instead I get exactly the behaviour I want. It's able to detect very subtle pressure sensitivity, allowing me to easily split pixelated hairs.

What's going on? Is there some mouse driver I can download or something that's better suited to the Dell trackstick? This is seriously such a big issue that it put me off of Linux for months.

I got this same mouse behaviour in manjaro liveboot, btw (the Dell feeling imprecise).

Answer 1

You can play with setting different values to different trackpoint properties and maybe compare props of your Lenovo trackpoint with Dell's. Use the command xinput list to see all input devices and their IDs. Then use xinput list-props $ID to see what the device is capable of and xinput set-prop $ID $PropID $value. I wrote some examples in another topic, but it's about Thinkpad trackpoint: here. There's also a brief instruction how to make changes permanent.

I think your issue is related to acceleration or movement smoothing.