How to enable the middle mouse button in Ubuntu

After a recent fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04, I noticed that my Thinkpad T61’s middle mouse button under the TrackPoint (the red stick-mouse thingy in the middle of the keyboard) wasn’t working. Every mouse operation was working fine, except I couldn’t hold the middle mouse button and use the TrackPoint to scroll up/down/left/right. Luckily this is an easy fix.

1. Install GPointing Device Settings from the Software Center (for me it was called “Pointing Devices”, so you’ll probably want to search for that first). Once installed, it will show up under “System > Preferences”.
2. Enable “Use Wheel Emulation” and set it to button 2.
3. You can then enable “Enable vertical scroll” and “Enable horizontal scroll” too if you like (I did).

NOTE: I’m not sure what “Middle Button Emulation” is, but I left it enabled on my machine.