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I am a complete newbie and a moderately incapable pensioner so forgive me if I ask a stupid question.

I have installed Ubuntu on my E7240 and everything works fine apart from the touchpad. I have 8GB RAM and a 128GB SSD and the i5 processor.

It's an Alps touchpad.

It works but the pointer jiggles around and so I cannot easily select text. Also when scrolling it sometimes goes in the wrong direction at first. It's almost unusable.

I tried installing the drivers from Dell for version 12 Ubuntu but that didn't help. See: https://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=0WKFN

Having tried the Dell drivers and not finding things much better I have installed a fresh install of 18.04.1 which also didn't help.

Basically the touchpad seems too sensitive to touch? I think that may be the issue.

DK Bose
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bobbaker
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    19.04 hasn't been officially released yet (expect by the end of April) and is off-topic here according to the rules. People here is very touchy so don't even go there ;). 18.04.1 or 18.10 are supported, you can ask anything about either release. Have you tried to adjust the touchpad's sensitivity? No additional drivers should be required. –  Feb 08 '19 at 16:37
  • Many thanks GabrielaGarcia.

    How do I adjust the touchpad sensitivity? I can only see an adjustment for speed.

    Shall do a fresh install of 18.04.1.

    Many thanks again

     – bobbaker Feb 08 '19 at 16:53
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    I would recommend sticking with LTS (Long Term Support) releases like 18.04 because they have 5 years support; all the others in-between have only 9 months. Regarding the touchpad yes, I meant speed. –  Feb 08 '19 at 16:57
  • Adjusting speed doesn't help. I tried all settings. Its just too sensitive to touch. And the pointer jerks around like mad when I try to accurately select something. – bobbaker Feb 08 '19 at 16:58
  • Some of the answers are going to depend on using wayland or X11 https://askubuntu.com/a/990224/283721 - if you are using X11, you may have the ability to add noise cancellation - https://askubuntu.com/questions/964749/trackpad-too-sensitive-to-use-in-a-laptop-with-ubuntu-16-04 – Charles Green Feb 08 '19 at 17:01
  • I ran this: env | grep -i wayland but I didn't get any output which I think means that I am not running wayland. Can I install it? Thanks Charles Green – bobbaker Feb 08 '19 at 17:03
  • OK have rebooted and selected wayland. How can I adjust sensitivity or how can I use X11 (I have no idea what that means) sorry. Also the second link you sent if for synaptics touchpad. Mine is an Alps. – bobbaker Feb 08 '19 at 17:12
  • echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE would tell you if you're on Wayland but keep in mind that Wayland is currently more "experimental" than X11. X11 is the default in 18.04 and it's what many, if not most, Ubuntu 18.04 users use. – DK Bose Feb 08 '19 at 17:33
  • Thanks DK Bose. So if I just reboot linux then is it automatic that I have X11. If so then how can I adjust touchpad sensitivity. Also what happened to the glidepoint adjustment screen as per this video. It would seem to solve all my problems but I can't find it anywhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-ctFuKmVl4 – bobbaker Feb 08 '19 at 17:38
  • I rebooted and went to the gearwheel before logging in and selected ordinary ubuntu and not ubuntu with waylands. What can I do now to reduce sensitivity. thanks anyone – bobbaker Feb 08 '19 at 17:50
  • Mmm. A comment on this thread: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2390322 suggests it would work ok with ubuntu mate but not ubuntu gnome (whatever that is). Does mate have a different set of drivers to just ordinary ubuntu? If not would i be better off installing an older version of ubuntu such as 16? – bobbaker Feb 08 '19 at 17:56
  • OK so I installed ubuntu mate 18.04.1 and then installed 18.10 . In both cases I still have the jerky pointer when using the touchpad. Though it is possibly minutely better. Do any of you please have any suggestions for solving this problem. It's the only thing stopping me moving over completely to linux on my laptop. Thanks for any help and sorry for not knowing much about linux. All the best. – bobbaker Feb 08 '19 at 22:35
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    Solved - for me on my system. I tried loads of distributions but discovered that the latest Kubuntu comes with lots of touchpad adjustments. However.. they are greyed out. I had to run "sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics" and then reboot. After that the adjustments weren't greyed out. And I managed to sort out the jumping pointer. I found this on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qMq-g82SEo I have no idea if this will work for everyone. But it did work on my Dell e7240, 8Gb, 128 Gb SSD, i5. – bobbaker Feb 10 '19 at 00:16
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    @bobbaker Please post your solution as an answer below by clicking the 'Answer your question' button to help future readers. It's absolutely fine (and very much encouraged) to answer your own question :) – pomsky Feb 11 '19 at 00:31
  • @bobbaker, Thanks for sharing your solution, and please listen to the suggestion by pomsky :-) – sudodus Feb 12 '19 at 07:39

1 Answers1

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For me on my system, I tried loads of distributions but discovered that the latest Kubuntu comes with lots of touchpad adjustments. However, they are greyed out.

I had to run 

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

and then reboot. After that the adjustments weren't greyed out. And I managed to sort out the jumping pointer. I found this on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qMq-g82SEo

I have no idea if this will work for everyone. But it did work on my Dell e7240, 8Gb, 128 Gb SSD, i5.

Source: posted as a comment by OP

pomsky
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