Updated! (09/24/25) - This also applies to FreeCAD running natively on GNU/Linux.
A quick post about mouse handling on GNU/Linux.
I’ve been using Moonlight to remote into my desktop running Sunshine for some CAD projects. In Fusion 360, middle click is used for panning and shift+middle click is used for orbit.
This has never worked with my touchpad buttons (W540 touchpad fitted into a T440p.) I turns out that historically, middle click has functioned as paste on Linux. This was preserved in KDE’s implementation of the Wayland protocol.
What I had to do to change this:
Toggle Settings -> General Behavior -> Middle-click: Pastes selected text.
Log out/back in.
Note: you can use libinput-tools to verify that middle button is sending BTN_MIDDLE.
Now. The next issue is that this is a momentary press and not a hold, even if you actually hold the button. To fix this, we need to install input-remapper:
wget https://github.com/sezanzeb/input-remapper/releases/download/2.1.1/input-remapper-2.1.1.deb
sudo apt install -f ./input-remapper-2.1.1.deb
I recommend checking the github for an updated .deb.
Your distro may package this, but mine did not include the systemd unit for the input remapper service so I opted for the manual install. Now:
sudo systemctl enable --now input-remapper
sudo input-remapper-gtk
You need to find what input device is misbehaving. See the screenshot for mine. Once you create a preset, hit record, click your middle button, then you can hit advanced and toggle Release input to off. Finally, in output, you should change Target to mouse and type BTN_MIDDLE in the field.
This fixed my problem and now I can orbit/pan in CAD using my GNU/Linux client running Wayland.
Hope this was helpful!