Trackpad issues with Dell M4300 & Fedora 10

[stodge]

I inherited a Dell M4300 and I installed Fedora 10. Everything is working nicely except for the trackpad. I have two issues;

1) I set the speed/accelleration to full but the pointer is still slow even when I swipe the total width of the trackpad. Is this normal?

2) It sometimes automatically registers a button click when I move the cursor over say a widget; button or a menu. Can I turn this off? I've never seen this before.

Any help appreciated
Thanks

[stodge]

I installed and configured gsynaptic and the trackpad seems a bit quicker, but why is this stupid auto click feature on? It's disabled! This is completely unusable. Another reason why Linux isn't ready for the desktop even though I'm trying to use it at work. grrrrr

[bbfuller]

Hello stodge

It may just be that you have an ALPS touchpad on your laptop and not a Synaptics. My Dell has.

The Linux touchpad driver needs some different configuration options to make it work satisfactorily in that case. Of course, it would be sorted out for you in Windows as the manufacturer supplies the driver.

If you run:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

it will list all your input devices. If the touchpad is identified as ALPS, I still have my notes for when I wrestled with mine in F10. Post back and I'll put them up.

[stodge]

Ah you're right - AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint.

Why can't Fedora automatically reconfigure itself in this case?

[bbfuller]

Hello stodge

Goodness knows, I suppose it's on somebodies list to "to do's" somewhere. If we were clever enough I suppose there would be nothing to stop us doing it. As it stands, it's down to configuration yet again.

Be aware that these notes are for my old F10 installation. If you get round to F11 then the process is different (but still manual) yet again.

Note also that these notes were put together with KDE users in mind. Gsynaptics doesn't work for KDE and therefore these notes refer to setting up everything in xorg.conf.

I had to modify my xorg.conf file to include the following:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Synaptics" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents"
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "2"
Option "TapButton3" "3"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
Option "LeftEdge" "120"
Option "RightEdge" "920"
Option "TopEdge" "120"
Option "BottomEdge" "680"
Option "FingerLow" "14"
Option "FingerHigh" "15"
Option "MaxTapMove" "110"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "20"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "20"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.4"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.99"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.035"
Option "MinTapTime" "110"
Option "MaxTapTime" "350"
Option "ClickTime" "0"
EndSection

Some of the "Section "ServerLayout"" you will probably already have.

Option "MinSpeed" "0.4"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.99"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.035"

control pointer movement, and:

Option "FingerLow" "14"
Option "FingerHigh" "15"

control tapping. This final section controls double tapping and by extension "tap to drag"

Option "MinTapTime" "110"
Option "MaxTapTime" "350"
Option "ClickTime" "0"

One or two notes from experience of sharing these instructions.

Do make a backup of the 'xorg.conf' file before you start altering it and make sure that you can restore it from the command line if necessary. One spelling mistake in this and you graphical environment won't start.

You should already have a section in that file headed "Section "ServerLayout"". Just the one line in red needs adding to that.

The section "Section "InputDevice"" will need to be created in its entirety. There will already be an "InputDevice" section to do with the keyboard. This part is completely in addition to that.

On a Synaptics touchpad machine you would just need to add the part highlighted red and green.

The numbers for Right and Bottom edges may be wrong for your pad. They are based on one of what we may call standard size pads, not a widescreen pad. Zero starts in the top left corner for all dimensions and you may need to adjust those to suit your circumstances.

The parts in blue are just explanations of what some of the configuration options do.

Some further thoughts. I insist on all the tapping options on my pads. The "Option "TapButton" sections control that and which option applies to which button. If you don't want tapping, leave those lines out.

Do make sure that you can restore xorg.conf as it advises. Just one misspelling in that lot and you can have a machine that refuses to boot into the graphical interface.

Post back with any questions or problems.

[stodge]

Thanks - that seems to have helped.