Enabling your mouse scroll wheel in X

This is a quick tip. It's been around for a while and I'm not even sure where I first saw it. But, if you have a mouse with a roller wheel, you can add this one line option to your X configuration file to enable it. You'll then be able to use it to scroll up and down in your web browser, terminal windows, pretty much any program that has an "up" and "down."

I'm using xorg on my systems now, but I believe the scroll-wheel option was exactly the same in XFree86. In the block for you mouse, which typically looks like this:

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier  "Mouse1"
   Driver      "mouse"
   Option      "Device"        "/dev/sysmouse"

... just add one more line like this:

   Option      "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5"

... restart X and you should be in business.


Whenever the subject is mice, I like to "give the devil his due" and admit that I use

M!cros0ft mice almost exclusively. That's one thing they've always done right. Software, not so much. :) But, a good, plain, optical mouse with a scroll wheel is hard to beat.