1

I can install crouton and go through the process of getting unity up and running (newest version of everything). The track pad at first works, but the pressure you have to apply is ridiculous. When I switch to Chrome OS, it's very light and easy.

After a restart, the trackpad and and keyboard do not work at all in Ubuntu. Everything in Chrome OS is of course, fine.

Looking for some help! Has anyone had this problem, or tried this on an Acer Chromebook 14?

Zanna
  • 70,465
user549069
  • 11

2 Answers2

1

I freely admit this doesn't directly answer your specific problem but I ran into issues with my Acer Chromebook 14 as well in Unity. Going with KDE instead worked better. If you're a Linux noob then switching environments isn't too big of a deal, right?

To install KDE, go through the same steps as using crouton for unity but the command to kick it off is sudo sh crouton -t kde instead of -t unity.

The keyboard works fine in KDE but the touchpad is still tricky. It doesn't need pressure as much as it needs finger surface area (using the pad of your finger rather than tip works). I'm digging through other Chromebook-touchpad-Linux threads to find a tweak that works to adjust the sensitivity.

Edit: Okay, I think I found the command to tinker with the touchpad sensitivity.

xinput set-prop "Elan Touchpad" "Synaptics Finger" aa bb cc

Where "aa", "bb", and "cc" are numbers. Mine had default values of 25, 30, and 0 which seem to translate as "low" "high" and "press" according to some X11 documentation I found. Using 5 10 50 worked alright for me. You may need to tweak those numbers. The important once is the "bb" value. It seems, as soon as it detects a pressure above "bb" it counts your finger as on the touchpad. So if it's not detecting your finger normally, lower "bb" until it does. Keep "aa" much much lower and set "cc" much, much higher so you can click with a tap.

GaidinBDJ
  • 11
  • There's probably a guru here snickering a bit at my fumbling here but I think I managed to suss it out. There may be a more elegant way of both doing it an explaining it but, hey, half the fun of Linux is the sussing. – GaidinBDJ Jun 04 '16 at 10:19
  • Thanks for the reply! This actually worked perfectly with the 5 10 50 numbers. The only drawback is that every time I open ubuntu, I have to re-enter, as it appears to not retain what I input.

    I can live with that. Thanks again!!!!

     – user549069 Jun 07 '16 at 21:44
  • You can put it in your ~/.xsessionrc file and it will run every time. – GaidinBDJ Jun 08 '16 at 23:01
1

I've just found this question while trying to do find something else, although I think I know a solution to this problem, at least for the track-pad:

At a terminal you can use the command synclient FingerLow=1 FingerHigh=3 which should change the sensitivity to make the track-pad feel more normal.

James Vickery
  • 113