R.A.T. 9 Mouse in ubuntu 11.04

I sit at a computer all day, using the cheapest mouse I could lay my hands on. I installed a program that did math on it and I realized that I have moved my mouse hundreds of miles. The same crappy one I got maybe 7 or 8 years ago.

So I recently decided it was time to get a "real" mouse. If I am spending so much time with it, might as well invest in something with some quality. I did some research settled on the R.A.T. 9 for my laptop and a R.A.T. 7 for my desktop. I have Windows as the base OS on my the desktop, and it worked fine there. The RAT9 however gave me some trouble in Linux (I am running ubuntu 11.04 currently).

Once I plugged in the mouse, I noticed it would freeze the buttons after a while of us. It was almost like I was holding down on of the buttons. Anyway, did some Googling and found these:

1. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1661126
2. http://fcns.eu/2011/04/cyborg-rat-7-mouse-under-linux/

The second link has some comments on it that fixed the issue primarily, but the 1st has some additional tweaks if you are looking to get the most out of your RAT9. One note of warning though, when you are modifiying the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, be sure you get the " characters right, copy paste will most likely put the wrong ones in there. If your computer hangs when you make the change, that's probably what happened... Definitely did for me!

Here's the quick and dirty:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf


Add this section:

Section "InputClass"
      Identifier "Saitek Cyborg R.A.T.9 Mouse"
      MatchIsPointer "on"
      MatchProduct "R.A.T.9|Saitek Cyborg R.A.T.9 Mouse"
      MatchVendor "Saitek|SAITEK"
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
      Option "Protocol" "auto"
      Option "Buttons" "17"
      Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 0 0 0 16 17"
      Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 10 11"
      Option "AutoReleaseButtons" "13 14 15"
EndSection