The Distinction Between Mouse Sensitivity and Acceleration (Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:29:00 PM)
This may sound like one of the stupidest posts ever, but seriously, I thought this was kind of cool. I turns out, throughout my years of using Fedora, I had never quite understood the difference between mouse sensitivity and acceleration.
Whenever I was using Fedora I'd think "Fucking A, my mouse just isn't working quite right. But oh well, this isn't Windows." I always just figured it was something that was never going to "feel just right" like it did in Windows.
I had adjusted the mouse acceleration and sensitivity before, but never quite understood what sensitivity was doing because acceleration was the only one that I noticed. Well, it turns out the subtle problems I was having with mouse feel was because my sensitivity was wayyyy too low.
Here's a couple definitions that I pulled out of my ass:
Mouse Acceleration: How quickly the cursor moves across the mouse "grid" so to speak (imagine a grid that fills your entire screen with a y and x axis).
Mouse Sensitivity: How many cells there are on the grid.
The subtle difference between comfort and annoyanceMy feeling that my mouse was inaccurate and jumpy even though it was moving quickly was because of this: my sensitivity was too low, so it was quickly moving across a rough set of cells, almost "skipping" very quickly.
So, again, I know this sounds like the most retarded "tech post" ever, but having a comfortable experience in your OS is as important as anything. It's sort of like comfortable walking shoes ... that pushing against your toe might not seem like a big deal, but wait til you walk 2,000 miles in them.
-Newman