I’ve been having a serious issue with phantom clicks on a laptop, to a point is nearly impossible to work on a desktop.

At first I assumed it was something related with a bluetooth daemon call that kept returning an error on startup. I forced access to a CLI and managed to uninstall the bluez package but the issue persisted.

I assumed then it was an issue with the mouse itself but after unplugging it completely, using the touchpad had the same behaviour. I also tried tweaking the mouse settings, to no difference.

Finally, I tried booting into Windows, as this machine has a dual boot, and there both mouse and touchpad report no erratic bahaviour.

After a few online searches, I found similar issues reported but back in 2014, mostly related with kernel drivers, which by now must be solved, as the system initially didn’t had this issue, with a fresh install.

The only non-repo app the system has is Zoom and, again, it didn’t started having this issue when installed.

Can someone spare some advice on this?

My temptation is to just do a fresh install but as I once read somewhere “we don’t do that here”. :)

The distro being run is Mint, on a generic Intel based laptop.

  • Serge Matveenko@lemmings.worldEnglish
    3·
    4 hours ago

    I don’t have a solution for you. Just wanted to cheer you up a little with my experience in a similar situation. In my case those phantom clicks and mouse movement were from a wireless mouse my kid uses which he was fiddling with like it’s a fidget in another room thinking he has turned it off.

    • qyron@sopuli.xyzOP
      2·
      3 hours ago

      Annoying but cute. I’m very careful with making sure the correct dongle is inserted in the computer.

      I use a vertical mouse no one else is capable of using and all the other mice in the house are conventional.

      There was a time where I regularly made a fool of myself by having more than one mouse connected.