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I need to find out which touchpad driver is being used on my laptop running Ubuntu 16.04 so I can replace the one that comes with Ubuntu 18.04 (which is not working well).

I've tried lshw which lists hardware information but there is nothing about a touchpad I can see.

I've tried lspci and again nothing about a touchpad.

I've tried xpinput list which gives:

Virtual core pointer                        id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ DLL0665:01 06CB:76AD Touchpad             id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]

but what does that mean? Is DLL0665:01 a driver?

I was expecting either libinput or synaptics to be listed somewhere as these names keep coming up when I search for linux touchpad drivers.

EDIT

As suggested, I've tried lsmod but no synaptics or libinput listed. I also tried lsmod | grep hid which gives:

hid_multitouch         20480  0
intel_hid              16384  0
sparse_keymap          16384  3 dell_wmi,intel_hid,intel_vbtn
mac_hid                16384  0
i2c_hid                20480  0
hid                   118784  2 i2c_hid,hid_multitouch
David
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  • Do either of the two appear in: lsmod ? – chili555 Jun 26 '18 at 19:28
  • @chili555 and there i was makign an answer :=) @david: DLL means Dell so not a driver but an identification. The important part is behind it: vendor id 06CB and device ID 76AD . In older topics you can see people need to blacklist i2c_hid https://askubuntu.com/questions/593466/xps13-touchpad-issues-with-14-04-2 but wait for chili555 since that instruction is very old ;-) – Rinzwind Jun 26 '18 at 19:29
  • Of course, as @Rinzwind suggests, also look for i2c_hid or any other hid in lsmod. – chili555 Jun 26 '18 at 19:33
  • @chili555 edited question with result of lsmod – David Jun 26 '18 at 19:52
  • lsmod shows kernel drivers. – Pilot6 Jun 27 '18 at 11:16
  • Related: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/131432/which-driver-is-handling-my-touchpad – Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com Jan 02 '21 at 10:07

1 Answers1

11

Run

xinput list-props 11

and you will see which userspace driver is used (libinput, or synaptics).

11 is the touchpad id from xinput list.

It was not quite clear which driver are you asking about: kernel or userspace.

Pilot6
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    xinput list-props 11 shows Synaptics driver is being used. Now I need to go and learn the difference between kernel and userspace drivers! – David Jun 26 '18 at 20:14
  • You can ask a question regarding the two drivers for input devices. It can be a good one. – Pilot6 Jun 27 '18 at 11:16
  • The command shows "libinput" in the beginning of most properties, so I think my device is using that. – jarno Jan 04 '20 at 11:03
  • What exactly determines which driver is used? If names of some properties start with "Synaptics", e.g. "Synaptics Edges", does it mean that Synaptics driver is definitely used? – Alan Jun 25 '21 at 11:46
  • This is correct. If you see synaptics in properties, then synaptics is used. – Pilot6 Jun 26 '21 at 11:11
  • I got nothing that shows either Synaptics of libinput. On MacBook with Ubuntu 16.04 I got Device 'Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad: ... – sugab Feb 19 '22 at 05:39