HOWTO Install btnx for better mouse control in Ubuntu Hardy

When I installed Hardy, I forgot to copy my awesome xorg.conf which held the configuration to enable all 12 buttons of my Logitech MX1000.

Lo and behold, a new method of configuring it has come about, albeit it was around prior to Gutsy.

btnx is the work of Olli Salonen. The program runs as a daemon, catching mouse events and turning them into either key presses or proper mouse events which the system can interpret. This eases the configuration one must do in order to enjoy the full potential of the high-end Logitech mice—a potential which, in my opinion, Windows cannot reach.

The installation process for btnx is pretty easy.

First, I replaced the mouse section of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf with this section. This may not be necessary, but I did it before discovering btnx.

Section "InputDevice"
     Identifier      "Logitech MX1000"
     Driver          "evdev"
     Option          "Name"          "Logitech USB RECEIVER"
     Option          "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
EndSection

Next, open a terminal and cd to the location where you keep your sources. I keep mine in ~/Source. This next section prepares the libraries required to build btnx and its support program, btnx-config, as well as subversion if you don’t already have it installed. I prefer to use subversion and checkout tags if they are available. It makes switching to a new version just a svn sw away. Last, it checks out the source for the two programs.

sudo apt-get install subversion libgtk2.0-dev libglade2-dev libdaemon-dev
svn co http://svn.ollisalonen.com/btnx/tags/btnx-0.4.9/
svn co http://svn.ollisalonen.com/btnx-config/tags/btnx-config-0.4.8/

Next, do a simple cm&smi for each program.

cd btnx-0.4.9
./configure && make && sudo make install
cd ../btnx-config-0.4.8
./configure && make && sudo make install

Now that both programs are installed, you must first configure btnx using btnx-config. Start it as root using the command below or go to Applications > System Tools > btnx. Click “Detect Mouse and Buttons”. You’ll probably be able to figure it out from there.

gksu btnx-config

I have the middle thumb button on my MX1000 configured to activate the Rotate Cube plugin of Compiz. I have it configured as Button10 in Compiz and BUTTON_9 in btnx. Remeber: Compiz and many other programs start counting buttons at 1, but btnx starts at 0.