[Solved] (but who knows WHY?) Odd touchpad issue

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

So trying to switch my Inspiron 7415 from Debian to Endeavour. My touchpad worked fine in Debian (both 5.10 & backports 5.15 kernels). Worked fine in Neon (hwe-edge kernel). Worked fine in the install USB for Endeavour. Soon as it’s installed, doesn’t work.

Have tried booting to LTS kernel to see if it was just a weird regression, didn’t work there either. xinput list shows it
image

[tim@slitheren ~]$ xinput list 13
DELL0A8C:00 27C6:0D41 Mouse                     id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]
        Reporting 7 classes:
                Class originated from: 13. Type: XIButtonClass
                Buttons supported: 7
                Button labels: "Button Left" "Button Middle" "Button Right" "Button Wheel Up" "Button Wheel Down" "Button Horiz Wheel Left" "Button Horiz Wheel Right"
                Button state:
                Class originated from: 13. Type: XIValuatorClass
                Detail for Valuator 0:
                  Label: Rel X
                  Range: -1.000000 - -1.000000
                  Resolution: 0 units/m
                  Mode: relative
                Class originated from: 13. Type: XIValuatorClass
                Detail for Valuator 1:
                  Label: Rel Y
                  Range: -1.000000 - -1.000000
                  Resolution: 0 units/m
                  Mode: relative
                Class originated from: 13. Type: XIValuatorClass
                Detail for Valuator 2:
                  Label: Rel Horiz Scroll
                  Range: -1.000000 - -1.000000
                  Resolution: 0 units/m
                  Mode: relative
                Class originated from: 13. Type: XIValuatorClass
                Detail for Valuator 3:
                  Label: Rel Vert Scroll
                  Range: -1.000000 - -1.000000
                  Resolution: 0 units/m
                  Mode: relative
                Class originated from: 13. Type: XIScrollClass
                Scroll info for Valuator 2
                  type: 2 (horizontal)
                  increment: 120.000000
                  flags: 0x0
                Class originated from: 13. Type: XIScrollClass
                Scroll info for Valuator 3
                  type: 1 (vertical)
                  increment: 120.000000
                  flags: 0x0

But no worky. If I install xf86-input-synaptics then I get BASIC functionality, with movement and left click only, but no 2 finger scroll, 2 finger tap, 3 finger tap, etc.
The weirdest part IMO is that all those features worked on the live USB (I have EndeavourOS_Atlantis_neo-21_5 live usb if that’s important). Anyone got any ideas?

2

There are some configurations that might help to resolve the issue:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Touchpad_Synaptics#Configuration

3

The only problem is that those are using synaptics, which doesn’t work WELL since it’s been so long since it was updated. I want to use libinput like all my other OS’s use correctly so that there’s not random stuttering and such (synaptics really is poor performance with modern touchpads).

1 Like
4

When I had problems with my touchpad (sensitivity) last year, the following helped me a lot. The two linked articles might probably be of help in configuring your touchpad’s functionality.

5

Did you boot the live USB and look to see what drivers, etc are being used in the neo-21_5 config? This might give you some idea of what is different from what was installed.

6

There are also some configuration options for libinput.
Sorry for bombarding the thread with links!
If you have already looked at them, please ignore the post!

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/libinput

https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/index.html

7

Ok, so ready for a weird one.

Installed libvirt, qemu, virt-manager, ebtables (which removed iptables to replace with iptables-nft). Enabled libvirtd, added myself to the libvirt group and rebooted to update my membership.
It’s working now correctly. I had rebooted at least 8 times last night, no changes. This was my first boot this morning. It makes no sense since I did no changes to anything input related, nor kernels. But it’s working exactly as it should be now, 1,2,3-finger tap, 2 finger scroll, probably other features I don’t use.

1 Like
8

And I shut down to take a call at work, and upon booting, doesn’t work again. Looks like I’m forced to stick with Debian on this machine, Arch just too unreliable for it.