Mouse sensitivity & acceleration settings reversed

I believe you are right. I'll try to gather some more information on this.

Bug reported upstream

The also seem reversed to me in Gutsy.

Yes i agree, Gusty have same mixup.
This should be fixed right away in my opinion.
It must be very easy to fix.

/Tibrisch

I believe these labels are simply wrong / misleading. Under Windows there are two options called speed and acceleration. Speed dictates the linear relationship between movement of mouse and cursor speed. Acceleration makes the relationship non-linear. So rather than cursor speed = mouse movement * <speed setting>, you have something like cursor speed = mouse movement*<speed setting> + mouse movement^<acceleration>

However, the mouse preferences under Ubuntu correspond to something different. If you look under gconf, theses two settings adjust "motion_threshold" and "motion_acceleration". Motion acceleration is really speed, and Motion threshold is meant to disregard small movements.

Therefore, it seems that the two fields in the mouse properties window should be "speed" (replace "acceleration") and sensitivity (keep the same).

I'm using 8.04 Alpha 5.

the gnome bug has been closed as not being a bug, doing the same on the distribution task, you can reopen the upstream bug if you disagree though

Hi!

I just stumbled onto this same issue. At the minimum, the help should be updated, to clarify this.

The term "acceleration" is used for non-linear mouse movement since decades. (see below)
If you really must use the word "acceleration" for the mouse/pointer speed ratio, then this must be clear at least in the help.

About the term "Sensitivity": the help is completely useless. It just says the same thing ("Sensitivity"), just surrounding it with some words: this is a setting, you change it with this slider, it applies to the mouse. Well, even a newbie user can figure this out on his own.

And finally, this means there is no actual acceleration* in ubuntu ? Would creating a RFE make sense ?

* - as in : same mouse movement (same distance) makes larger pointer movement, if done faster (that is "the user moves the mouse faster")

PS: I notice significant "negative acceleration" when the "Acceleration" setting is 0 to 25 % (that is anywhere in the first quarter of its range, from the "Slow" to the right). ("Sensitivity" is set to maximum ("High").
By "negative acceleration" I mean: the movement over the same physical distance with the mouse causes lower point movement distance when the mouse is moved faster. Example:
 - move the mouse slowly to the right one inch: the pointer moves 200 pixels to the right
 - move the mouse faster to the right, but the same distance as before, one inch : the pointer moves only 100 pixels to the right

PPS: And at settings about 50%, there is positive acceleration. I give up ...

Oh, I forgot, this is all with the 8.04 beta desktop i386 CD, in the live environment.

It's invalid in the sense that the labels are not swapped, but it's still valid in the sense that the labels are wrong. can this be re-opened?

This interface also doesn't allow you to set smooth acceleration. It only lets you change the garbage "acceleration" where it switches between two fixed speeds. There should be a way to set continuous acceleration (in xset you set threshold as 0)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=748412