Re: ALPS touchpad issues still exist in 2.6.12-rc4

Stuart Shelton
2005-05-10T23:17:48Z

On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 17:20 -0500, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> On 5/10/05, Daniel Drake <dsd@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> > > Do you have an ALPS touchpad? Try applying Peter Osterlund's patches
> > > from here:
> > >
> > > http://web.telia.com/~u89404340/patches/touchpad/2.6.11/
> >
> > Even with these patches applied, some Gentoo users are still reporting
> > problems with ALPS touchpads. Are there any suggested solutions for
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4281 ?
>
> For tap-and-drag support and to control topuchpad's sensitivity you
> would need to install Synaptics X driver (and/or updated GPM with
> evedev support).
>

Hi,

I've been testing this on my laptop in framebuffer console mode only -
I've not tested the Synaptics driver with the newer kernels.

I'm not sure if an updated GPM is the right solution: tapping does very
occasionally seem to work (although it might be some facet of the bug
that sometimes causes the cursor to appear and select the character
beneath it when typing).

More than this, with every kernel (at least since the very early 2.4
ones) up to 2.6.10 the ALPS touchpad has worked just fine through
input/mice or the psaux device - why has this changed in 2.6.11, and can
the change be reverted before 2.6.12 is released?

The principal of least surprise would suggest that effectively breaking
the input device driver for an entire class of hardware should be
avoided if at all possible...

Cheers,

Stuart