I’m just in the process of configuring a custom workstation (Debain based) in KVM using the preconfigured .xml settings template.
One of the things that I have noticed, which has been bugging me, is that the mouse input inside my custom workstation is inaccurate and not smooth at all. I understand that this has something to do with the mouse being set to use a P/S2 mouse with ‘Relative Movement’. However, I noticed that the default workstation uses the same settings and achieves 1:1 movement with the host.
How is this possible, and how can I replicate this behaviour in my custom workstation?
Dunno.
But if you want to investigate this, I would say view the XML files in use.
Editing an Imported Machine’s XML Configuration (no need to edit just yet, just view)
Then compare the file contents. A File Comparison Tool might be helpful.
It would be adviseable to base a Whonix-Custom-Workstation on the Whonix-Default-Workstation XML anyhow.
I have already based my custom workstation off of the recommended preconfigured .xml file found in the documentation. So there are no significant differences between the default workstation and my custom one as far as .xml configuration is concerned.
It seems, on the other hand (following some experimentation), to be something that’s determined by the default workstation’s particular configuration of the xfce4 desktop environment, as I have tested running other window managers (on both the default workstation and custom) and the problem makes itself apparent.
The only instance where it is not apparent is using the whonix pre-configured install of xfce4 - even vanilla xfce4 on the workstation has problems with mouse input.
Therefore, there must be some configuration made to xfce4’s settings by Whonix (which differs from vanilla) that enables 1:1 mouse input with the host without enabling USB based input with ‘Absolute Movement’.
I can confirm that Kicksecure / Whonix source code doesn’t come with “special” mouse configuration. It’s default settings by Debian, X11, Xfce. No settings are modified by the derivative.
(Well, except Kloak but its task is not to influence that kind of setting.)
General Linux configuration question. Unspecific to Whonix.
Default vanilla guest configurations on Linux have the USB Tablet mouse device added by default to guests. I removed it because I didn’t notice much difference in UX to decrease attack surface. You can add it back if you want to,
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Check if this helps:
(Written just now.)
Mouse Smoothness