In the standard 3.13 kernels for 14.04 the touchpad wasn't supported at all. Therefore it worked, but it was impossible to turn off its most irritating feature which was tap to click. Most implementations at least give the option to disable this when typing, but the default generic implementation didn't even have that, rendering the touchpad worse than useless as it was impossible to avoid touching it whilst typing, resulting for example in the point of input in emails and editors getting randomly moved to wherever the pointer happened to be. I found some info claiming that this was fixed in 3.19 where there was a real ALPS touchpad driver. However, the effect of the fix was simply to disable the touchpad completely, at least for my laptop. I discovered that it was still possible to enable tap to click should I happen to want that, so clearly the driver was doing something. However, it did not contain any support for moving the pointer that I could find. Then the 3.19 kernel (vivid) got replaced during an upgrade to the xenial series 4 kernel as below. Unfortunately this didn't work any better, which is why I raised the bug against 4.4.
I'll give the 4.8 kernel a go, but it will be a few days before the require round tuits arrive. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel Packages, which is subscribed to linux in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1622167 Title: ALPS touchpad driver doesn't work Status in linux package in Ubuntu: Incomplete Bug description: First, the collected kernel version is wrong. I'm running 4.4.0-36-generic, but inside ubuntu 14.04. Anyway, the touchpad refuses to act as a pointer mover. It will, if I let it, do tap to click (which is the last thing I want). But, as things stand, I'm forced to use the little button in the middle of the keyboard. Supposedly the 3.19 kernel was going to install a proper driver for the ALPS touchpad, and whilst at least I'm not now stuck with the generic driver and unable to turn off tap to click, I no longer have pointer movement. In the relevant bit of /proc I can see N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad" xinput shows this jon@harada:~$ xinput ⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Stick id=11 [slave pointer (2)] ⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad id=12 [slave pointer (2)] so I assume there is a real driver at work. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04 Package: linux-generic 3.13.0.95.103 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-36.55~14.04.1-generic 4.4.16 Uname: Linux 4.4.0-36-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.21 Architecture: amd64 AudioDevicesInUse: USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /dev/snd/controlC0: jon 2099 F.... pulseaudio /dev/snd/controlC1: jon 2099 F.... pulseaudio CurrentDesktop: Unity Date: Sat Sep 10 14:24:35 2016 HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=9d74fe15-1696-413a-9428-cf9b52730f3e InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-09-12 (728 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140417) MachineType: TOSHIBA TECRA Z50-A ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-36-generic root=UUID=08d487a3-23ef-4d2a-916e-cafb168982ac ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 RelatedPackageVersions: linux-restricted-modules-4.4.0-36-generic N/A linux-backports-modules-4.4.0-36-generic N/A linux-firmware 1.127.22 SourcePackage: linux UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) dmi.bios.date: 12/26/2013 dmi.bios.vendor: TOSHIBA dmi.bios.version: Version 3.20 dmi.board.asset.tag: 0000000000 dmi.board.name: TECRA Z50-A dmi.board.vendor: TOSHIBA dmi.board.version: Version A0 dmi.chassis.asset.tag: 0000000000 dmi.chassis.type: 10 dmi.chassis.vendor: TOSHIBA dmi.chassis.version: Version 1.0 dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnTOSHIBA:bvrVersion3.20:bd12/26/2013:svnTOSHIBA:pnTECRAZ50-A:pvrPT545E-00G00VEN:rvnTOSHIBA:rnTECRAZ50-A:rvrVersionA0:cvnTOSHIBA:ct10:cvrVersion1.0: dmi.product.name: TECRA Z50-A dmi.product.version: PT545E-00G00VEN dmi.sys.vendor: TOSHIBA To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1622167/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages Post to : kernel-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
