Interesting -- I would not have thought of acpi as relevant to mouse acceleration, but then maybe so.
A little more troubleshooting today. The same issue exists on a Dell Latitude E6500, 64-bit KDE, but only with the touchpad, not with the pointing stick. I booted the Toshiba with a USB serial mouse, and the mouse works perfectly. I booted the Dell with the same USB serial mouse, and it works perfectly. So the problem is limited to the touchpads on both those machines.
Next, I checked what hardware was found under /proc/bus/input/devices, and this is where I found something interesting. Here are the relevant details:
Toshiba NB205:
System: Host: tosh205 Kernel: 3.15-4.towo-siduction-686 i686 (32 bit gcc: 4.9.0)
Desktop: LXDE (Openbox 3.5.2)
Distro: siduction 12.1 Desperado - lxde - (201205212227)
Machine: System: TOSHIBA product: TOSHIBA NB205 v: PLL20U-00201D
Mobo: TOSHIBA model: KAVAA v: 1.00
Bios: TOSHIBA v: V2.20 date: 03/16/2011
CPU: Single core Intel Atom N280 (-HT-) cache: 512 KB
flags: (nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3) bmips: 3326
Clock Speeds: 1: 1333 MHz 2: 1333 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Graphics Controller
bus-ID: 00:02.0
Display Server: X.Org 1.15.99.904 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1024x600@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 945GME x86/MMX/SSE2
GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 10.2.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Network: Card-1: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller
driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: 2000 bus-ID: 04:00.0
IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:23:5a:fa:a0:32
Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)
driver: ath9k bus-ID: 03:00.0
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 00:23:08:96:77:a1
Drives: HDD Total Size: 40.0GB (16.7% used) ID-1: model: OCZ
Info: Processes: 151 Uptime: 7 min Memory: 600.9/2016.1MB
Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 4.9.0
Client: Shell (bash 4.3.111) inxi: 2.1.28
$cat /proc/bus/input/devices
.
.
.
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=0000
N: Name="ALPS PS/2 Device"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input1
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input13
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event11
B: PROP=0
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=0200
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input10
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse2 event12
B: PROP=0
B: EV=b
B: KEY=420 0 70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=1000003
Dell Latitude E6500:
System: Host: e6500 Kernel: 3.15-5.towo-siduction-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 4.9.0)
Desktop: KDE 4.13.2 (Qt 4.8.6) Distro: siduction 13.2.1 December - kde - (201401272125)
Machine: System: Dell product: Latitude E6500
Mobo: Dell model: 0PP476 Bios: Dell v: A14 date: 07/31/2009
CPU: Dual core Intel Core2 Duo P8600 (-MCP-) cache: 3072 KB
flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 9578
Clock Speeds: 1: 2400 MHz 2: 800 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA G98M [Quadro NVS 160M] bus-ID: 01:00.0
Display Server: X.Org 1.15.99.904 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1200@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NV98 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.2.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Network: Card-1: Broadcom BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY driver: b43-pci-bridge bus-ID: 0c:00.0
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 00:23:4e:ab:86:7a
Card-2: Intel 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection driver: e1000e v: 2.3.2-k port: efe0 bus-ID: 00:19.0
IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:21:70:d4:d3:04
Drives: HDD Total Size: 120.0GB (72.7% used) ID-1: model: OCZ_VERTEX
Info: Processes: 174 Uptime: 0 min Memory: 506.4/3947.8MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 4.9.0
Client: Shell (bash 4.3.111) inxi: 2.1.28
$cat /proc/bus/input/devices
.
.
.
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=0000
N: Name="DualPoint Stick"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input1
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input14
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse2 event14
B: PROP=0
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=0200
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input11
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse3 event15
B: PROP=0
B: EV=b
B: KEY=420 70000 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=1000003
Notice the final Alps PS/2 device is identical in both machines that have the problem. So I think the Alps device driver may be the culprit, but I don't know anything about it -- whether it is a built-in kernel module or how it works. For the Toshiba, dmesg shows this:
[ 5.841338] input: ALPS PS/2 Device as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input12
[ 5.888876] input: AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input8
I think there's a bug, but I don't know which package to file against. Any idea?
EDIT: It looks like the
fedora devs are aware of it and have a working patch for it now -- see comments 35 - 44 on that thread. It is a bug in the fedora package named xorg-x11-xserver-xxx -- but the debian xserver packages are named differently. So apparently it did come from the xserver-xorg update yesterday.