Disabling mouse acceleration in Mac OS X

I've been looking for a solution to the unusable mouse problem in Mac OS X for ages. I've tried a gazillion programs and fiddled with every setting there is or there can be added. So far, I haven't found a way to get linear mouse response in Mac OS X.

At this point I'm seriously considering installing another operating system.

But before I do that, or go hacking around OS binaries, maybe someone here has a solution?

I want linear mouse response. I want high sensitivity. I like my touchpad acceleration and would like to keep it if possible. Any ideas?

P.S. I've been at this for a long time, I'll probably have already tried the most popular answers.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.6.5 on a MacBook Pro. I don't use a particular brand of mouse.

I'm not looking for any commercial solutions.

I've tried:

• Mouse Acceleration Preferences Pane, the Snow Leopard version of which can get me close to a linear response, but at the cost of tracking speed (sensitivity).
• Answers on this question: Make Mac OS X mouse acceleration more Windows-like
• About every code snippet I found via Google.

From what I've gathered so far, the only method to kill the acceleration curve seems to be to set the mouse scaling to a negative value (for which there are apparently two methods.) Unfortunately, this also kills the tracking speed. Before 10.4, there was a function to which you could pass your own acceleration curve which solved everything.

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By the way, here is the Linux counterpart to this question: Disabling mouse acceleration in X.Org (Linux)

...and here's the programmatical variant, as I'll be trying to roll my own solution: Disabling mouse acceleration in Mac OS X @ SO

Use your manufacturer's mouse driver, if available

Alternatives are the general, commercial, all-purpose mouse utilities/drivers USB Overdrive or Steermouse, or use Mouse Acceleration Preference Pane.

Short answer, write on a Terminal:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1
defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.trackpad.scaling -1

That should do it for both mouse and trackpad. If you want to restore the default values, type:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling 

Big-time answer, check out Mouse Curves Acceleration Preference Pane (free download). Open your Preferences Panel > Mouse Acceleration and set the Mouse value to 0.0x

That should do it but if you want more control you can also check the App at the same page that gives you full control on these and other mouse settings.