[Novalug] touchpads, mice, and installing linux on a laptop.

pereira ninorpereira@gmail.com
Sun Mar 20 17:11:01 EDT 2016


All,

here are some words to the wise but not-so-knowledgeable
who contemplate installing linux on a refurbished laptop.

Following a discussion on this list, I purchased an ASUS
XM551 and a Lenovo to try this out. Installing Xubuntu 14.04
in a double-boot configuration on the Lenovo went well,
but (as has been mentioned here) it would have required
more knowledge than we have to do the same on the ASUS.
There, we kicked off Windows 8.1 in favor of Xubuntu.

The sole trouble that turned out to be difficult to overcome
is to make the touchpad operate properly. Despite many attempts
at coming up with parameters for the touchpad, found by
exercising the settings accessible through 'xinput', the cursor
remained jittery, the left- and right mouse buttons seemed to
get activated at arbitrary moments or through accidental
mis-touching of two different keys together (in a way that I
have not yet understood). In short, using the laptop with
such a balky mouse was a nightmare. Apparently I was not
the only one with touchpad problems after installing linux
on a laptop, and that this is so is clear from remarks in various
.conf files, which have settings for specific laptop makes.

As suggested on this list, I added a USB mouse as soon as
possible. That seems to have solved the problem.

Thank you Mighty Mouse!

Nino


On 03/15/2016 11:31 PM, Bryan J Smith wrote:
> Nino Pereira wrote:
>> The secret is a program called xinput, which is a utility
>> that lists available input devices and allows you to change
>> the input parameters.
> It's also one of the commands I use to turn on/off input to various
> X-sessions.  ;)
>
> I.e., It's how I "hide" and "change" the input device when I'm running
> a sandboxed or otherwise alternative X session so one cannot see
> another -- going back to my prior comments on 'know thy environment.'
> ;)
>
> SIDE NOTE:  It's also how I f--- around with people's desktops when
> teaching them basic X, including switching the input of 2 keyboards
> that are set to different X displays, on the same system.  Oh that one
> always gets laughs, especially if other people are watching and figure
> out what i did before the people typing do.  ;)
>
>> To list those, type (in a terminal, which you can get irrespective
>> of the mouse's state of health by typing ctrl-alt T): xinput.
>> My touchpad shows up as #13. You can change its properties with
>> xinput set-prop 13 "Device Enabled" 1
>> and in general change any property (find them with xinput list-props 13)
>> with a similar command.
> Yep.  I have aliases/scripts on my systems to enable/disable
> touchpads/finger devices.  E.g., on my Dell Precision m4600, I have
> the tpon/off commands ...
>
> L="`xinput list | sed -n 's/^.*DualPoint.*id=\([0-9]\+\)[^0-9].*$/\1/p'`"
> for l in ${L} ; do
>    xinput set-int-prop ${l} "Device Enabled" 8 [0|1]
> done
>
> The L gets me the exact device number(s) for the "DualPoint" devices
> (there are 2 -- one touchpad, one finger), which I then send to the
> property command with either 0 (disable) or 1 (enable).
>
> -- bjs
>




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