Spin/Pan/zoom with mouse

Yes, it sucks. It's been done, I understand, to get windows certification, would you believe. (Make the interface as awful as everything else or you can't put the 'designed for windows' logo on your box, or somesuch rubbish - basically microsoft refusing to acknowledge someone else may have a better idea than them. That would be why I have all that Red Hat stock)

Anyway, rant over, my fix was to buy a 5 button mouse, such as a logitech MX518, and configure the two thumb buttons to be a duplicate mmb and shift key. the 'zoom on scroll wheel' funtion is worth keeping. I also configure the 'switch application' button to be 'return'