Installing Linux is a great way to revive an old laptop computer that you thought was too old and slow to be worth keeping. The problem though is laptop manufacturers only create drivers & software to support the Windows operating system their machines were made for, so when you want to get things like a touchpad to work in Linux, you have to rely on the best guesses of the people who made the OS to get the settings right. Unfortunately, they often miss the mark.
I recently just installed Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon 64-bit onto a 3+ year old Dell Vostro, and found that using the touchpad was a maddening experience. Just hovering a finger over the touchpad without touching it would make the mouse pointer move. So whenever I’d put my finger down or pick it up, the pointer would move, which made navigation very difficult and frustrating. Luckily, I (mostly) solved the problem. Here’s what I did (cobbled together from a few forums to save you the effort) :
First, open a terminal window and type:
sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
Then type:
sudo cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/60-synaptics.conf
Then open that file (60-synaptics.conf) and add this section to the end. Save it, and reboot:
Section "InputClass"Identifier "touchpad"Driver "synaptics"MatchIsTouchpad "on"MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"Option "FingerHigh" "40"Option "FingerLow" "35"EndSection
That got me 95% of the way there. The laptop is usable now, although I continue to tweak those “FingerHigh” and “FingerLow” options to dial it in to exactly the way I like it.
The problem is, it will never feel exactly as it did when it was a Windows machine, using the proprietary Dell software & drivers governing all manner of touchpad behavior, but this gets it close enough to justify putting off buying that new laptop a few more years… :)