Trackpad substitution

[aguycalled]

Hi!

I’m pretty happy with my Librem 15v3 except the trackpad quality. This is the only thing preventing me from fully moving from my Macbook pro.

Can anyone provide some hint on how to find a trackpad which could offer a better experience and I could use for substituting the original one?

[scaled]

Slight wobble in touchpad (Librem 15V3)

I guess the title says it all: there has a slight wobble when using/clicking the touchpad since I got it. Carefully tightening the screws on the bottom of the touchpad hasn’t worked, so I’d like to know whether there is a solution (the sound and tactile feedback are somewhat distracting). Apart from that, I’d have to commend you for the touchpad. It’s vastly superior in its functioning when compared to most of the others I’ve tried recently, and it’s a definite improvement over the one in my As…

[aguycalled]

This is not related with my issue. In my case my feeling is that the touchpad does not have enough resolution for offering an smooth experience. It’s not comfortable using it. Adjusting speed/acceleration does not help.

[scaled]

Help needed! Trackpad having problems

Mladen, can you explain my case? I have correct ground in my house, but i have this trouble with touchpad regardless of AC power only on Glass Table. In wooden table all works perfectly. Also, libinput, which used in Gnome, can filter this oscillations due to the decrease in touchpad response. I use libinput as driver for my X11 desktop. Also, why my laptop shocks me if i leave it charge without ground?

Maybe you have same problem. libinput driver just apply filter to touchpad to filter random oscillatoins, which appear with glass table in my case, and bad ground in house other users cases.

[aguycalled]

That’s neither my problem… It happens always no matter the surface or if its plugged or not. I know another Librem user who has the same feeling with the trackpad. So not specific to my device.

I only get something near to precise movements with the pointer setting the speed at low values. Which is uncomfortable to use. Making a straight line with the pointer is an impossible mission. No matter the speed. Setting the acceleration does not help…

[aguycalled]

With my mac I can make small and precise movements easily and when I need to move to the other side of the monitor I can do it very quickly. That’s not the case on the Librem.

[scaled]

What GNU/Linux distribution you use? If you use PureOS, i can’t help you. If you use something with X11 and synaptics touchpad driver, you can adjust Hysteresis values.

$ synclient HorizHysteresis=5 VertHysteresis=5

Default is 19 in my system. To check existing values, just type

$ synclient | grep Hysteresis

or you can just switch from synaptics touchpad driver to libinput. I prefer libinput, because it have better latency and it can dynamically filter oscillations when i move laptop to uncomfort place for touchpad.

[aguycalled]

Yes, PureOS + Wayland.

No solution for PureOS?

[scaled]

No solution for wayland. Or… You can check manual for Libinput, it is default for wayland. Probably you can change some settings for it with command line utility, but i just created configuration file for my X11 desktop, and didn’t change acceleratoin and sensitivity settings, because I like default sensitivity of touchpad. Check manual for libinput, it contain many settings, which doesn’t exist in Gnome Tweak Utility.

$ man 1 libinput
$ man 4 libinput

Config for X11 desktop (probably someone need it for lightweight X11 desktop):
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-libinput-touchpad.conf

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "touchpad"
	Driver "libinput"
	MatchIsTouchpad "on"
	Option "Tapping" "on"
	Option "NaturalScrolling" "true"
	Option "ClickMethod" "clickfinger"
	Option "DisableWhileTyping" "false"
	Option "TappingButtonMap" "lrm"
	Option "ScrollMethod" "twofinger"
	Option "HorizontalScrolling" "false"
EndSection

[anaqreon]

The xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package helped me with my Librem 13 v2 running Ubuntu 19.10, so thanks for the idea.

A related thing I had to do was to activate the syndaemon to prevent accidental touchpad clicks while typing. You have to enter a command like this:

syndaemon -d -t -K -R

and use your preferred method to activate this automatically when you log in. Additional options are explained in the syndaemon man page.

[Bejaranoe]

I just got my librem 14 and have noticed the same thing. It is hard to land the cursor in between the letters of a word or over small buttons. It does feel like there’s not enough resolution at any speed. I’m afraid it may be a hardware limitation. Have you found any fixes?