Touchpad not working on Macbook - Mint KDE

[autonerd]

Hi all -- I just installed Linux Mint 17 KDE on a Macbook (early 2008). My one problem is that the touchpad does not work at all. Actually, it works for a brief second when the login screen is up, then stops. If i plug in a USB mouse, that works just fine. The touchpad did not work when I ran from CD either, and it *does* work when I run the computer under OSX.

Results of xinput with mouse disconnected:
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ appletouch id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Apple Computer Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Apple Computer Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]

With mouse connected, that changes to:

⎜ ↳ appletouch id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Microsoft Microsoft® 2.4GHz Transceiver v5.0 id=14 [slave pointer (2)]

Searched the forums but can't seem to find a solution. Thank you in advance!

Aaron

[eolith]

Hi Aaron - had precisely the same problem (Macbook, Mint Xfce 17.1).

Simply try

Code: Select all

synclient FingerLow=1; synclient FingerHigh=10

in a terminal. This works for me.

(see also http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=813884&page=6 )

To make it permanent I added the command to the list of start up applications under "Session and Startup". Works well. (There may be a better way, since it does not work yet on the login screen but that does not bother me.)

Good luck.

[Wild Penguin]

(There may be a better way, since it does not work yet on the login screen but that does not bother me.)

There is, one way would be to edit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf, I have in it (EDIT: only part of the file, not the whole file!):

Code: Select all

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
# This option is recommend on all Linux systems using evdev, but cannot be
# enabled by default. See the following link for details:
# http://who-t.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-ignore-configuration-errors.html
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Option "FingerLow" "10"
        Option "FingerHigh" "90"
        Option "MaxTapMove" "25"
        Option "LockedDrags" "on"
        Option "LockedDragTimeout" "1500"
EndSection

See "man synaptics" for more info.

Probably an even more correct way would be to create a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d, but last time I tried it, the whole touchpad stopped working (probably conflicting with another file in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d). I didn't investigate it further, instead chose to edit the file in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d instead because that works for me.

I still have the problem that the drag mode is entered by accident (so that large blocks of text becomes selected when not intended and / or links / icons being dragged instead of just moving the cursor / two-finger scrolling) - this never happened on OS X. If someone can figure out what is causing it, and possibly workarounds, that would be appreciated (also there's something wonky in two-finger-tap / click detection, too; two-finger scrolling does work >90% of the time, but often (maybe 50% of the time) two-finger taps/clicks (mapped to 3rd button) are detected as one-finger (1st button)).