I have seriously tried to solve this issue myself, but I'm very new to Linux and the solution is not coming to me.

I am using Mandrake 10.1 with the KDE 3.2 desktop. I have a very serious need to use a left-handed mouse, i.e., the main button is the right button.

I can find no way to configure the mouse to be left-handed. The system/configure menu, while it shows a window for various mouse adjustments, has the "Left-handed" option greyed out and unavailable. I have tried using the command xmodmap -e "pointer = 321" command both at the root menu and at ~/etc/X11, as I have seen suggested in a few places. It returns an error.

Is mouse button remapping possible to do in the KDE environment, or do I have to switch to GNOME? If it is possible, how is it done? If not, how can I switch to GNOME now that I've downloaded and installed KDE?

Thanks for any help! This is my first day with Linux, so sorry if this is a very "newbie" question.

What error does it return?

If you have more buttons than 3, just swap buttons 1 and 3.

Thanks for answering, ROR.

The error the xmodmap command returns is: "bad value 3216745 given for numbers list"

The current mapping of my buttons under the heading "button code" obtained with the xmodmap -pp command is 1236745, and the syntax I am using is to switch 1 and 3, as suggested (xmodmap -e "pointer = 3216745")

you'll need spacers between the numbers

Woo-hoo! Thank you very, very much! It never occured to me that spaces would be significant.

Now on to my next project--creating a start-up script so this happens automatically on loading. I want to try myself first, but I'll post back if I have any questions.

OK, I wrote a script, saved it to the /.kde/Autostart file, and ... IT WORKS! I have a left-handed mouse on startup, and the pain along the length of my arm from using a "backwards" mouse has dissapeared.

Thanks, ROR, for putting me on the right track.

If you want that permanent for any window manager you can shove it in ~/.xinitrc or ~/.xsession (I think it depends whether you get to X from startx or from going to init 3)

Thanks! I will try that.

make sure you append a & to it so your X session doesnt terminate there when you type startx

Thanks, Scuzzman!