This started happening a few months ago, I would be minding my own Ubuntu business and then suddenly I can’t left click.
After much digging and stupid AI querying, I added something to disabled power management to my boot sequence. That seems to minimize the problems but I still get the problem every 5 minutes or so.
To temporarily fix the problem I Ctrl-alt F3 then F2 to come back to. GNOME.
I tried with a mint usb and I got the same problem. I thought it was then maybe a mouse problem but the pointer does the same no matter what mouse I use and every mouse I tested worked fine on another Ubuntu of the same release. So I think maybe it is some sort of hardware and driver combination and to power management.
I see lots of posts of past years but nothing more recently, but no real solutions or explanations for what might be happening.
Your problem is probably an ACPI setting, if that helps you look up an explanation. Try putting usbcore.autosuspend=-1 in the kernel options on your bootloader. If that works, that’s definitely the problem, so then either you’re good without it or if you still want autosuspend for everything else (good for battery life on a laptop) you should look into a more fine grain approach.
I did this. It does work but when I restart I get the darn problem again.
In order to make the kernel option persist, you will have to add the option to your bootloader config. Ubuntu probably uses grub, but in any case, I never can remember how to configure any of the bootloaders. Someone here can probably help out (or it’ll be a quick search away, I’m sure).
How about a command that runs at every startup then? Some call it autostart and it could be any script you make. Not the solution but an effective workaround.