Aug 31 2007
Mousekeys on Linux
Sometimes, you may need to use the keyboard for controlling the mouse pointer. Such as when your mouse is dead or you are temporarily stuck with an old machine that doesn’t recognise a USB mouse (and you don’t have the other options).
Under Windows, the Mousekeys settings are under Control Panel >> Accessibility Options. On Linux, we have AccessX for this purpose. AccessX is a set of features designed to make X more accessible to users. The site at http://www.math.missouri.edu/~stephen/software has some useful links if you want to know more. AccessX is built into X Window System version R6 and above. So you will not need to install it separately now.
If you want to enable Mousekeys (and many other accessibility features) on your Ubuntu machine, the steps are given below. I did this on Ubuntu and Kubuntu Dapper.
1. Install xkbset written by Stephen Montgomery-Smith (http://www.math.missouri.edu/~stephen/). xkbset is a utility that allows you to interact with the AccessX features of X.
sudo apt-get install xkbset
2. Turn AccessX on. I needed to do this only on Ubuntu.
xkbset a
3. Turn MouseKeys on.
xkbset m
4. After turning Mousekeys on, you can use the numeric keypad to control the pointer. The default settings are as follows:
| NUM 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 |
Direction control |
| NUM 5 | Click |
| – | Switch to right click mode. Press 5 now to right click. |
| / | Switch to left click mode |
| 0 (INS) | Switch to select/drag mode. Now use direction control keys to select/drag stuff |
| . (DEL) | End select/drag |
5. If you need to turn off MouseKeys,
xkbset -m
