Lateral mouse movement stops scroll wheel

Hi,

First, is there a mailing list archive I can search? I have a half-dozen
dopey questions that I could research myself.

Onto the topic: I noticed that using the scroll wheel on a mouse produces
inconsistent movement. I finally deduced that when there is lateral
movement on the mouse, the scrolling from the wheel is canceled. This
behaviour seems consistent across multiple Ubuntu VMs and Windows. Is
this normal? Is there a way to cancel that behavior?

Thanks for the awesome editor.
Russ