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The Magic Mouse under Ubuntu [update]

I recently bought myself a magic mouse. In the first place to use it with my MacBook Air (such a sweet laptop!) but why shouldn’t I use it on my ubuntu pc? The initial configuration is as easy as other bluetooth enabled hardware. Choose from the bluetooth applet drop down menu “Configure new device…”. Make sure your mouse is turned on (the little switch at the bottom of the mouse). Choose your mouse from the list and use the PIN “0000″. When your magic mouse is paired, the little green light at the bottom of your magic mouse stops blinking and lights up green. Now you can use your magic mouse as a normal mouse but, multi-touch & scrolling doesn’t work.

After some searching on the ubuntu fora, I’ve found this post : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1534190
Apparently, the magic mouse works out of the box in 10.10 :

I just got my magic mouse and was expecting problems, but to my delight scrolling works out of the box. I’m running an up to date 10.10 (alpha?) with kernel 2.6.35-13. I guess all the drivers have been inserted into the new kernel. Haven’t tried any 2-finger zooming etc as yet.

Some dude maintains the backports for Maverick (10.04) of the Magic Mouse drivers on his github:http://github.com/scottferg/multitouch

Head over there and download the tarball. unpack it and open an terminal and head over to the directory where the source of the drivers are. run the following:

sudo apt-get install cdbs

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b

cd ..

sudo dpkg -i multitouch-kernel-source_1.5_all.deb

reboot your pc, connect your mouse (make sure bluetooth is active, power on the mouse, wait a few seconds and click the mouse) and enter the “0000″ pin. Scrolling on the x & y axes should work now.

Another dude made a python script for multitouch gestures on the gnome desktop:

Hardcore hacks ahoy. If you use my kernel driver and follow these instructions you can get PyMT up and running on Lucid. PyMT requires an application to be running on the desktop, but continues to accept input whether or not the app has focus (or is minimized). Because of this, I was able to hack together a rough implementation of multitouch gestures for the desktop.

Swiping left/right with two fingers will rotate the cube. Swiping down with three fingers will call up Expose. In order to use this you will need the Dbus, Scale, and Rotate Cube plugins enabled in Compiz. I also had to be a little dirty and apply:

Code:

$ sudo chmod a+r /dev/input/event7

in order to run the app as the current user. Without this, Dbus can’t connect to the running session.

Here’s the Python file: http://gist.github.com/546779

PyMT installation instructions for Lucid: http://pymt.eu/wiki/DevGuide/InstallPymtUbuntu
PyMT configuration instructions for Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch/PyMT

I haven’t tried this out. Let me know ( and the dudes on the forum post ) how it works for you!

Update: Turns out PyMT stands for Python Multi Touch, and is kinda a python library for multi touch gestures. This dude above created a python script that uses multi touch gestures to interact with your (compiz) desktop.

• 3 finger swipe up:
  show desktop
• 3 finger swipe down:
  exposé
• 2 finger swipe left:
  rotate desktop cube left
• 2 finger swipe right:
  rotate desktop cube right

If you follow the instructions, it’s easy to install!

Tags: apple, bluetooth, dkpms, driver, kernel, magic, magic mouse, mouse, ubuntu