Arch Linux

asadali

Member

Registered: 2015-03-07

Posts: 13

Trackpad on XPS13 with touchscreen

Hello,

I managed to finally install Arch linux on my 5th try. I'm really pleased!

Now the next challenge is to be able to use my trackpad. I've twiddled with many serrings but I can't get it to work reliably. Here are the behaviours I see

1) This is hard to explain but it makes using the trackpad near impossible. When we want to move the cursor all the way to the left, but can't do it by swiping all the way to the left on the trackpad for whatever reason, we lift our finger, go back to the center, and swipe left again. When you lift your finger and put it back on the trackpad, it should not move, and continue where you left it. However, for me, when I lift my finger and put it back on the trackpad, the cursor jumps to the right! In other words, the cursor moves when I tap the trackpad close to where I lifted my finger from it. I messed around with the hysteresis settings and the pressure settings but I couldn't figure out how to fix this.

2) Using one finger only, sometimes it just gets stuck. This usually happens when I lift my finger from the trackpad and put it in another place (because I had reached the physical end of the trackpad), and it won't move. I suspect that it somehow things I have two fingers on it instead of one when this happens.

On the wiki, there is a line somewhere that says that touchscreen laptops are problematic and fixes will come soon, but I'm hoping there is something I can do to make the laptop usable. I guess I just have to carry a mouse.

Thanks!

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: Trackpad on XPS13 with touchscreen

...... I've twiddled with many serrings but....

Please elaborate !

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asadali

Member

Registered: 2015-03-07

Posts: 13

Re: Trackpad on XPS13 with touchscreen

Mostly changing the settings in synclient, which are temporary. I tried changing FingerHigh, FingerLow, Hysteresis, acceleration etc. They all had an effect but none fixed the problem.

molecula21

Member

Registered: 2010-10-20

Posts: 33

Re: Trackpad on XPS13 with touchscreen

Just got my Dell XPS 13. Neat machine, but trackpad issues are annoying. Regarding your problems:

1) Had that on the start, just applied the xorg configurations on the wiki and that got fixed. Still not 100%, in some applications the click on the lower left corner (left click) + dragging on the middle gets really strange, but I haven't lost a lot of time tunning the xorg confs for synapitic.

2) Sometimes my trackpad completely freezes, and only moves if I click on it and drag. tapping an clicking still works, just moving dont.I have to restart the Laptop since I have no idea how to "restart" the synaptics driver. On my older laptop I used to reload the psmouse module, but in this one this module isn't loaded.

QUESTION: How to restart synaptic driver without psmouse module loaded?