Problem with touchpad on laptop running Linux.
Problem with touchpad on laptop running Linux.
Hi, I purchased a Lenovo laptop for college last year and have been running Windows 10 on it. Recently, I've become curious about Linux, especially Pop OS. Initially, I planned to install Ubuntu but prepared the USB drive. When I began the setup, my touchpad stopped working. I connected an external mouse hoping it would fix the issue, but it wasn't listed in the XInput settings. At that time, I was busy and didn’t have time to investigate further. A few months later, I tried booting Pop OS again, but it failed.
As a beginner in Linux, any advice would be greatly appreciated. I went through the installation using an external mouse and started troubleshooting. I checked xinput, but nothing related to the touchpad appeared. The command `cat /proc/bus/input/devices` showed no touchpad entries, except for "i2c-ELAN0001:00/input/input4" named "Elan Touchscreen," which was confusing since it wasn’t a touchscreen laptop.
After some research, I found that using Ctrl+Alt+F3 opens a Virtual Terminal and I touched the touchpad. The feedback indicated a change in packet numbers when pressing the touchpad—03 on touch, 01 when released. This suggested the touchpad was detected but something was amiss, possibly a driver issue or kernel incompatibility.
I attempted several fixes: installing and updating Elan drivers, checking other drivers, and even tried building my own kernel following guides. However, many steps failed, and I’m unsure what to do next. I noticed this problem often occurs with Lenovo products, which might be related to how Lenovo handles touchpad drivers for the Linux kernel.
Given my limited Linux experience, any guidance would be invaluable. Thank you for your help—I appreciate it even if I misunderstood something.
//itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-ideapad-5-15are05-elan-touchpad-not-working-on-20-04-nor-on-18-04/ It could be simpler to opt for a compact wireless mouse instead.
I replaced the touchpad with a USB mouse and felt much better. You should check the command line settings for disabling the touchpad at startup—it might help you too.