I’ve got cpu scaling turned on, and setting it to “performance” makes the mouse slightly more responsive, but the cursor will simply stop moving if there’s any disk activity, or if Firefox is loading a page, or anything like that.

I changed /etc/cpuspeed.conf (FC6) to reflect my preference
(GOVERNER=performace) and, so far, mouse and keyboard inputs are smooth over a few reboots (I’m at a coffee shop typing this on it now). Should that change, I’ll certainly let you know.

You should also check the files in (the equivalent of)
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq to see if your cpufreq-set
command did what it was supposed to do.

It’s always good bumping into others who share a difficulty. It lets me know I’m not red-line senile… yet.

Even though it’s a brick, I do like my i8100. SXGA resolution on the screen, two batteries give almost 4 hours of play time, and it seems to handle the occasional buffeting it gets from its somewhat absent-minded owner.

Happy Inspironing…

And now that you mention it, I used to have Dapper installed on this laptop, and I didn’t ever remember there being a lag issue like this. I’ll bet you’re right: I’ll be it is a 2.6.19 probelm. I should drop back to Dapper and see if the problem dissipates.

Well, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one suffering. I was worried I was going nuts for a while.

I hope the cpufreq-set trick works for you. Sometimes it does for me, sometimes it doesn’t. A cold boot seems to help too, but it shouldn’t be that much work to live without mouse lag.

Thanks again! I don’t feel so alone now!

P.S.: Aren’t those 8100s great machines?! I have an 8000 decked out to pretend it’s an 8200, and I just love that series. I wish I had about two more of them, just to keep me busy.

I stumbled across your blog because I, too, have been experiencing
mouse/keyboard lag under 2.6.19 when no such lag exists under 2.6.9.
This problem exists on a PIII-1GHz Dell inspiron 8100 laptop which
works wonders for my surfing/note-taking tasks.

I am running FC6 and KDE and your suggestion to try using cpufreq-set -g performance seems to have curbed the problem… thus far.

I’m pretty good with linux, but not that great with kernel “majik”, so as much as I’d like to know what changed along the road (and would hope will get fixed), I much appreciate you posting your fix out here for poor clueless souls like me to find.

Much thanks,

-Dave

I used to have problems a long, long time ago with a mouse plugged into the PS/2 port on an old P2-200Mhz laptop; it’s possible this is somehow akin to that.

I’ll try shifting to a USB mouse instead of PS/2, and see if that’s any improvement. I have a feeling the CPU scaling is somehow to blame, though.