Thinkpad 13 Trackpoint slowdown in i3 window manager

As has been mentioned on Reddit, the Thinkpad 13 trackpoint settings aren’t in the same place as those of older thinkpads. Despite some troubleshooting, I haven’t yet found what files to edit to adjust the trackpoint’s speed and sensitivity in Ubuntu 16.04.

The trackpoint has been slightly sluggish/unresponsive when I use the i3 window manager, and has additional intermittent slowdowns when using Chromium and Firefox in i3.

Although I don’t yet know the right way to fix trackpoint sensitivity on this machine, I accidentally discovered a highly effective workaround today:

  • Log into Unity (the default desktop that Ubuntu ships with) and configure the mouse and input settings as desired
  • Log out, and get back into i3wm
  • Launch unity-settings-daemon
  • And suddenly, the mouse works correctly the way it did in Unity!

I fully realize that this is a nasty hack around identifying and solving the actual problem, but it succeeds at making the mouse responsive while minimizing time spent troubleshooting.