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

John Franklin franklin@elfie.org
Mon Mar 21 17:57:42 EDT 2016


Upgrading to 4.x kernels helped with a twitchy touchpad on a MacBook Pro under Linux Mint.  The upgraded drivers are better at reading and interpreting the touches.

jf
--
John Franklin
franklin@elfie.org



On Mar 20, 2016, at 5:11 PM, pereira via Novalug <novalug@firemountain.net> wrote:

> 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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