Inspiron 13 touchpad super sensitive, impossible to use- Mint 18.2

[hom_tanks]

Hi

The touchpad on my Dell Inspiron 13 2-in-1 laptop is horrible after Mint install. The cursor keeps shifting erratically as I type , text keeps getting selected and deleted; basically keyboard is unusable when my palm/fingers hover over the touchpad.

During the Mint 18.2 install, I selected proprietory drivers to be installed. Now when I do xinput I see:

⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ELAN Touchscreen id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ DELL073B:00 06CB:7E7D Touchpad id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=16 [slave pointer (2)]


I tried playing around with xinput properties, but to no avail. Is there a way to remove the extra touchpad driver above? I have a feeling that is the root cause of the problem. I know the hardware is fine as it works fine in Windows 10.

Any ideas welcome!

Cheers

Update: as user below points out, the reason for erratic behaviour may not be related to this at all, but leaving original question as is for now

[catweazel]

It's normal. I have two mice, three keyboards and two power buttons listed.

Code: Select all

⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Rapoo Rapoo V710 Gaming Keyboard          id=9    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech G300s Optical Gaming Mouse       id=10   [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)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Rapoo Rapoo V710 Gaming Keyboard          id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Logitech G300s Optical Gaming Mouse       id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Eee PC WMI hotkeys                        id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]

It would help others to help you if you described the problem you're actually having with the touchpad rather than speculating about the cause.

[hom_tanks]

Sorry for not elaborating, but I thought "touchpad is terrible" is self explanatory.The cursor keeps shifting as I type , text keeps getting selected and deleted; basically keyboard is unusable when my palm/fingers hover over the touchpad. I have also updated the original post above

I have tried using xinput set-properties on the Synaptics id , going up to real high values to adjust sensitivity but it doesn't seem to be helping at all.

Anything else I should be trying?

Thanks

[K32237h]

I seem to be having similar issues and it just started happening. My touchpad is glitchy/laggy for lack of a better word. Messed around with settings and I have also tried doing a fresh install of Mint KDE with no luck. I am running my Bluetooth mouse and it works great. I have a Toshiba Satellite Radius 12 P25W-C2300-4k running KDE. I am a newbie I recently switched from windows and have only ran mint in a virtual environment in the past so this is new to me but I am determined to learn!

[WharfRat]

hom_tanks,

Try xinput --set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" "0" in the terminal

[Faust]

Quite a common problem which I guess is why " Disable touchpad when typing " is included in Settings ( Mouse / Touchpad )
.... in Mint 17.3 anyway .

There is an app called Touchpad-Indicator which gives more user options for fine tuning :-
http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/home/how- ... ives-linux

The problem is also discussed in this earlier thread :-
viewtopic.php?t=229288

[BG405]

" Disable touchpad when typing " is included in Settings ( Mouse / Touchpad )
.... in Mint 17.3 anyway

+1. It is indeed present in the 18.x series too, at least in Cinnamon and KDE. Haven't checked the others yet. In LM18.2 KDE it's under Input Devices BTW.

In KDE I set it to disable the touchpad when a mouse is plugged in. I couldn't find that option in Cinnamon 17.3 or 18.1 but I've read somewhere in this Forum that it's possible. Might have a look for it later.

[hom_tanks]

Thanks for the suggestions, folks. The "disable touchpad when typing" setting under Touchpad seems to help a little bit, but still not perfect . I will try out the app.

BTW, the xinput command for disabling the touchpad is not a workaround for me as I would like to be able to use the touchpad a majority of the time w/o the mouse.

Cheers!

[revian]

I am using Mint 18.2 on a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop and the "Disable Touchpad while typing" does not actually disable the touchpad while typing - accidentally brushing the touchpad while typing will induce all manner of problems including selecting and replacing text while typing.

[BG405]

The thing with "disable touchpad whilst typing" is that you still need to avoid brushing against it during the first (few) keystroke(s) for this to be effective. I don't tend to use touchpads unless really necessary i.e. when the cell has gone flat in the mouse, so tend to have it disabled but I think the default delay when typing before reactivation of the touchpad is about 2 seconds.

ETA:

I am using Mint 18.2 on a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop and the "Disable Touchpad while typing" does not actually disable the touchpad while typing

I will investigate this. Is it with Cinnamon, KDE or one of the others? As far as I know it works OK with KDE; I don't have the touchpad connected internally (or use the built-in keyboard, for that matter) on my Cinnamon machine.

[revian]

The thing with "disable touchpad whilst typing" is that you still need to avoid brushing against it during the first (few) keystroke(s) for this to be effective. I don't tend to use touchpads unless really necessary i.e. when the cell has gone flat in the mouse, so tend to have it disabled but I think the default delay when typing before reactivation of the touchpad is about 2 seconds.

ETA:

I am using Mint 18.2 on a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop and the "Disable Touchpad while typing" does not actually disable the touchpad while typing

I will investigate this. Is it with Cinnamon, KDE or one of the others? As far as I know it works OK with KDE; I don't have the touchpad connected internally (or use the built-in keyboard, for that matter) on my Cinnamon machine.

This is with Mint 18.2 Cinnamon on a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop. Thank you very much for looking into this. Also I would be more than happy to provide any further information such as the output of commands on my machine, hardware info, etc.. if you need such info. I've tried several Linux distros and Mint runs circles around all of them. The touchpad problem is the only issue I've ever had with Mint.

What I think would be great would be the ability to add a keyboard combo to completely disable the touchpad - toggle it off temporarily. That way, we could toggle the touchpad off entirely and not have to worry about accidentally erasing the long letter we are in the process of writing. Being able to toggle the touchpad off and on would quickly resolve this issue.

[revian]

I found a very easy way to toggle the touchpad on and off using a keyboard combo. This is actually already a keyboard combo in the Settings app in Cinnamon 18.2. See the attached picture. I set mine to CNTRL+F8 and it works perfectly regardless of whether or not I have a mouse attached to the machine. So, everyone who turned off "tap to click" for the touchpad can now turn that setting back on and use a keyboard combo to toggle the touchpad state.

[BG405]

It's great that you've sorted it, sorry about my lack of response been quite busy & only just spotted the notification. Hope this also helps the OP.

[objectchord]

Got to Preferences - Mouse/Touch pad adjust sensitivity.

[hom_tanks]

All

Just wanted to report back after trying the suggestions made by some. Unfortunately, the touchpad is still too flaky for me to be user friendly. At this rate, I may have to abandon my desire to use Linux on this laptop and fall back for now on Windows, which I loathe but at least can use without pulling my hair out every minute.

Cinnamon stock setting for Disable touchpad when typing and sensitivity settings: made things better but still nowhere near ideal usability touchpad

touchpad-indicator app and sentivity settings: slightly better than stock settings but only by a little

Recompiling libinput library: I got halfway through and then am stuck with an error with ninja which I cant figure out. This seems to be the most promising option based on some folks opinion but not sure if I will be able to get past it
Compile Error (for the curious):
../tools/libinput-debug-gui.c:373:2: error: unknown type name ‘GdkSeat’
GdkSeat *seat;


Thanks for all those who gave suggestions, the community is one of the reasons why I want to make Mint my full time OS for personal use.

Cheers

.

[revian]

All

Just wanted to report back after trying the suggestions made by some. Unfortunately, the touchpad is still too flaky for me to be user friendly. At this rate, I may have to abandon my desire to use Linux on this laptop and fall back for now on Windows, which I loathe but at least can use without pulling my hair out every minute.

Cinnamon stock setting for Disable touchpad when typing and sensitivity settings: made things better but still nowhere near ideal usability touchpad

touchpad-indicator app and sentivity settings: slightly better than stock settings but only by a little

Recompiling libinput library: I got halfway through and then am stuck with an error with ninja which I cant figure out. This seems to be the most promising option but not sure if I will be able to get it right

Thanks for all those who gave suggestions, the community is one of the reasons why I want to make Mint my full time OS for personal use.

Cheers

.

So, even my example of how to have a keyboard combination that will toggle the touchpad off/on at your convenience wasn't good enough? I have to wonder.. what exactly were you expecting? But, to each his or her own.

[hom_tanks]

Sorry but toggling touchpad on and off is just not practicable way to use a ultra compact notebook (if you mean "turn off touchpad when you want to type and turn it back on afterwards"). If by this you mean use a mouse instead, the whole point for me is not to have to carry around a mouse with this notebook. Maybe thats just me. YMMV.

[revian]

Sorry but toggling touchpad on and off is just not practicable way to use a ultra compact notebook (if you mean "turn off touchpad when you want to type and turn it back on afterwards"). If by this you mean use a mouse instead, the whole point for me is not to have to carry around a mouse with this notebook. Maybe thats just me. YMMV.

Ah, ok, I think I understand now. It works for me as I simply use the keyboard combo to turn off the touchpad when I want to type and then turn it back on when I want to use it. I can definitely see how that would be awkward but I have no other choice - to me Microsoft Windows is a child's toy and cannot be trusted.. so that "operating system" (wannabe) is not really an option.

[hiccups]

Just want to throw in my 2 cents here because I have experienced this same exact problem that the OP has described on my Inspiron 14. It seems to be simply that the "disable touchpad while typing" does not work in Mint. I also use a key combo shortcut to easily enable/disable the touchpad, and bought a mouse. Would never go back to Windows for this reason, hell no. But would be nice to get it sorted and get that "disable touchpad while typing" setting actually working on Dell Inspiron laptops.

[hom_tanks]

Am happy to report that I am having a much better experience after being able to compile and install the latest libinput. This link has the instructions:
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinpu ... input.html

I was able to get past the earlier problem I was having after adding the compile flag -Ddebug-gui=false

Code: Select all

meson --prefix=/usr -Ddocumentation=false -Dlibwacom=false -Ddebug-gui=false builddir/

While the touchpad is still a bit erratic, its much better than with the old libinput and I hope I can continue to use it with this notebook.

Cheers