Touchpad
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Hello, I've just installed Trisquel on a late 2007 MacBook with relative ease except that my touchpad isn't functioning fully. I've tried installing drivers/modules from the synaptic package manager but I'm not entirely sure how it works or if there is even a better driver for my touchpad?
I also have a Apple magic mouse laying around that I would like to use if I could but I suspect that you most definitely need proprietary drivers?
Currently, my touchpad only works when I press my finger down flat (maybe I need chubbier fingers?) and I can't scroll too comfortably without it skipping back in the other direction.
Sorry, I'm completely new to gnu/linux.
Thanks.
Hi there!
Just try plugging in the mouse and see what happens. Regarding the touchpad, have you checked out the configuration options in system settings?
There is also a user unfriendly but much more encompassing way to fiddle with the various parameters. This involves opening 2 terminal windows.
In one of them read the manual page for the driver
man synaptics
In the other first make backup of your old settings
synclient > ~/original-touchpad-settings
(The tilde (~) means your home folder, i.e. /home/YOURUSERNAME/)
Then input
synclient
This will list the value of some variables. You can find out what they mean from the other window.
You can then change the values with
synclient variable=new value
If things go wonky, you can always check the file ~/original-touchpad-settings for the original values.
Thanks lembas, I will give this a go. It's worth noting that I am also new to command line.
I have connected the mouse by bluetooth but it doesn't seem to be working. From what I've read, Synaptik is supposed to be the go-to generic touchpad driver? Other people have said good things about it so I'm not sure why it's not working for me. I'd also like to know if I install multiple touchpad packages from the Synaptic Package Manager will they interfere with eachother?
Ah, bluetooth! Does it work on your machine, can you connect with something else? I believe the free drivers for bluetooth are scarce.
I don't think multiple touchpad packages will interfere.
So far I have been using the Synaptic Package Manager to search for "touchpad" and testing all of the available packages with no luck. Is there any way to find out which one I should be installing for my particular system?
I tinkered around with the synaptiks touchpad program in the accessories menu but wasn't able to configure it to work any better.
I found this link (my MacBook is actually model 3.1) and I noticed at the bottom it says you need kernel version 3.15 for the touchpad to be pleasant to use. I have worked out Trisquel is using 3.13. So am I right that different distributions use different versions of the Linux kernel and there is no way to currently use 3.15 with Trisquel?
I'm starting to think the only way to have a smoother experience will be to get a USB mouse. Could you recommend a good cheap one? Or will most mouses work ok?
There's a repository with newer versions of Linux-libre:
Are you on Trisquel 7 or 6? You can find out what version of the kernel you're on with e.g. the command
uname -r
Most if not all USB mice will work. On the other hand if you want to get working Bluetooth there's a few options here guaranteed to work with free software https://www.thinkpenguin.com/catalog/wireless-networking-gnulinux If you follow their link on the right hand side of this page, they will donate part of their profits to Trisquel.
The Macbook touchpad needs a lot of fine-tuning to make it comfortable to use. I installed libreboot on mine (from 2008) and spent half a week trying to find proper settings.
I ended up with the Xorg settings described at the end of the section on Macbook 2.1: http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/index.html#macbook21
uname -r
3.13.0-39-lowlatency
Eemeli, were the Xorg settings you ended with decent enough?
This setting looks like what I need:
# The next two values determine how much pressure one needs
# for tapping, moving the cursor and other events.
Option "FingerLow" "10"
Option "FingerHigh" "15"
How do I get to these settings? I haven't seen some of these in the system settings. Command line?
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