The Problem: some touchpads are REALLY slow under Debian, you have to tap like a piano player to get the little arrow from one window to another.
And yes, this is really annoying since everything works fine with an USB mouse.
Even worse, you didn’t notice the problem with an Ubuntu installation. But you don’t want any brown hot nasty things on your precious laptop.
The solution was here. Maybe you’ve got an ALPS touchpad, not a Synaptics one! Eureka!
Wanna know what to do? Read on!
«Wonderful. How do I know wether it’s an ALPS or not?»
Easy. Type this in your shell
cat /proc/bus/input/devices
Here’s the relevant part of my output (on a Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook S2110):
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=7322
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio4/input0
S: Sysfs=/class/input/input5
H: Handlers=mouse2 ts2 event4
B: EV=f
B: KEY=420 670000 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3
B: ABS=1000003
«My output is similar, I do have an ALPS. What should I do?»
Assuming that you’ve already installed the Synaptic driver, you only have to open /etc/X11/xorg.conf and set the “Protocol” option to “alps”in the touchpad section.
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Here’s mine:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "alps"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "SHMConfig" "true"
EndSection
Save with CTRL+O, close nano with CTRL+X and restart the X server by hitting the CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE keys and enjoy a F1-speeding arrow :o)
UPDATE!!!
Now I’m on Arch and didn’t have problems so far, so I am posting my touchpad section in xorg.conf, maybe it will work on Debian too…
Section "InputDevice" Driver "synaptics" Identifier "Touchpad" Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0" #"/dev/psaux" Option "Protocol" "auto-dev" Option "LeftEdge" "130" #"1700" Option "RightEdge" "840" #"5300" Option "TopEdge" "130" #"1700" Option "BottomEdge" "640" #"4200" Option "FingerLow" "7" #"25" Option "FingerHigh" "8" #"30" Option "MaxTapTime" "180" Option "MaxTapMove" "110" #"220" Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "75" #added line Option "VertScrollDelta" "20" #"100" Option "HorizScrollDelta" "20" #added line Option "MinSpeed" "0.25" #"0.06" Option "MaxSpeed" "0.50" #"0.12" Option "AccelFactor" "0.0010" Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200" #added line Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200" #added line Option "UpDownScrolling" "1" #added line Option "CircularScrolling" "1" #added line Option "CircScrollDelta" "0.1" #added line Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2" #added line Option "SHMConfig" "on" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on" #added line EndSection
[…] touch for mouse click and mouse movement too slow. Try to search and finally found one guide with nice instructions. Just change the Option “Protocol” to alps then everything […]
Thanks for this tip…I just switched from ubuntu to debian and it worked!
Thank you so so much.
Glad it helped :o)
[…]The Problem: some touchpads are REALLY slow under Debian, you have to tap like a piano player to get the little arrow from one window to another.[…]
wow thanks man it worked thank you very much
how i can slow down it by a little bit
Hi Sumesh,
I think you could do it with the “touchpad” utility you find on most distros, or simply by inserting an option in xorg.conf like… “AccelFactor”, this it is the first 1 that comes up in my mind.
A quick search in Google for xorg.conf touchpad options should do the trick.
This was bugging me for ages! I really didnt want ubuntu on my laptop as well. Worked like a charm
I love you!
THnaks a lot, so much usefull
WOOT! Thank you for taking the time to post this info!!
Thanks a lot. This issue troubled me a lot, but you helped me get rid of it.
Sevensins I think I love you!
Almost the first instruction ever in Linux (could not really do much with the SloooooooW touchpad) and it worked, first time and brilliantly
Thank-you!, muchos gracias,