Kitchen T410 running Linux Mint gets another step closer! Input Remapper took some (a very small amount of) learning but seems to do what I want it to do: use a mouse’s extra buttons to control the system (almost wrote “Windows”!) volume.
Rough guide:
Select device - I first tried it with a Logitech mouse.
Select Editor tab
On the Input side, click Add.
Click Record BUT… make sure you ONLY input the input you want, i.e. don’t move the mouse AT ALL whilst pressing the extra button (in this case, I was using the sideways clicks available on the scroll wheel, resulting in the output: Wheel Left. Initially it added something about hires, but that didn’t happen when testing for this guide)
On the Output side we find the biggest deviation from X-mouse: there isn’t a handy dropdown of commands to choose from, so some educated guesswork is in order. I tried typing in simply, volume, and it presented a list of possible commands, allowing me to choose KEY_VOLUMEUP.
Repeat this for anything else on the device you want to map.
Click Apply button at top.
CRUCIALLY: Toggle the Autoload switch to the right/ticked. This will mean this remapping applies when the system (nearly typed “Windows” again! Microsoft has conditioned me well…)
IMPORTANT: to make any changes to the Input or Output, you have to click the Stop button first. I was mildly frustrated before realising this.
Use the Rename field to give the remap a name that makes sense to you (I went with Wheel_sides_do_volume) and remember to click the save button to the right of the textbox.
I also made an entry under the device: “ThinkPad Extra Buttons”, just for the heck of it. The “famous” blue ThinkVantage button doesn’t actually seem to do anything under Linux (and I don’t remember it responding in Win10 or 11 either) so I figured why not make it do something? Input recording revealed that pressing the ThinkVantage button outputs XF86Launch1 and I eventually settled on using it to put the computer to sleep (seemingly known as Suspend in Linux Mint). There is a sleep shortcut (Fn + F4) already and I used that in another Input recording to find out what the command was called for the Output side. Even doing this whilst recording actually put the computer to sleep, which seems like not the desired behaviour, but when I woke it up again, it showed me the command I wanted was XF86Sleep. I could have also found this out by simply trying typing in “sleep” and the program would have (as with “volume”) presented me with the possible commands, including XF86Sleep. I’ve named this remapping ThinkVantage_to_Sleep.
An unusually successful day!
Also: managed to accidentally align the taskbar panel items to the left. What to do: right-click panel and toggle Panel edit mode, then drag icons from one coloured (red, green, blue - very subtle colours…) zone to another.
I’m just going to straight-up copy this next section from https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=403145
[quote]
I wanted Cinnamon's Panel (or taskbar in Windows parlance) to behave more like Windows or Mate. Basically, I wanted that if I open two (or more) windows of Firefox, for example, that the programs would not show as one single icon on the Panel, but as two icons. And I also wanted the labels to be added to icons. What is referred [to] as the "traditional layout".
I fixed it by following these instructions:
1. Run any program.
2. Right-click on the program’s icon on the panel
3. Click on “Applet preferences”
4. Click on Configure…
5. At the General tab: turn off “Group windows by application”
6. At the “Panel” tab: “Button label” select “Window title”
[/quote]
I couldn’t put it better myself.
