You may want to work with openSUSE, but without graphical user interface, in pure text-mode. To switch there, you can use: “Ctrl+Alt+F1...F6” for six different console sessions, available by default. To go back to GUI mode use: “Ctrl+Alt+F7”. The reasons to switch to text-mode may differ: from nostalgic, to learning Linux to save some CPU cycles and RAM.
By default, you work in GUI, that has mouse already enabled via X Window System. The Linux console cannot use mouse driver from X, and therefore, has a separate driver, called gpm.
To enable mouse in console, we use the gpm. It works by taking the raw device file, and applies some algorithms to it, to convert it to a mouse pointer.
Check if gpm is installed with:
> rpm -q gpm
If not, then install it first. Fortunately, the gpm package is included with openSUSE.
Unfortunately, gpm cannot autodetect mouse type, so we must specify this manually.
For PS/2 mouse use: (must be root
)
# gpm -m /dev/input/mouse0 -t ps2
The “-m” parameter stands for “mouse-device”, while the “-t” parameter stands for “mouse-type”, or protocol.
For my USB mouse the same command worked. Somehow it works with the PS/2 protocol.