Fedora 26 Planning To Drop The Synaptics X.Org Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora 26 Planning To Drop The Synaptics X.Org Driver

Another early feature being talked about for Fedora 26 is no longer installing the Syntaptics X.Org driver by default...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-26-No-Synaptics-Default

[andrebrait]

Libinput has to be enhanced then. It's currently so imprecise and weird that I end up installing the synaptics driver in every distro that defaults to libinput. It's akso much less feature-complete with no palm detection, settings to adjust sensitivity/tap detection, minimum and maximum speeds, etc.

[horizonbrave]

is OpenSUSE (even Tumbleweed) still using it by default? My track pad always get the option to disable "tap to click" under gnome settings but it never get any option at all when I install OpenSUSE, sadly..

[Mateus Felipe]

Fedora is the distro that contributes most to Wayland development, as well as the GNOME Team. Libinput have worked well here for months a while. Surely it has much to improve, as any software, but I really love how it's supperior to Synaptics.

[liam]

Libinput has to be enhanced then. It's currently so imprecise and weird that I end up installing the synaptics driver in every distro that defaults to libinput. It's akso much less feature-complete with no palm detection, settings to adjust sensitivity/tap detection, minimum and maximum speeds, etc.

What do you mean "imprecise"?
Libinput supports palm detection (https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libi...detection.html) since 1.5. The other parameters you mention are dependent on your de's settings ui to expose. Here are the relevant functions: https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libi...p__config.html
Work is ongoing to get the right pointer acceleration curve but moving to the rmi4 protocol (instead of emulating ps/2) will help many things.

[andrebrait]

What do you mean "imprecise"?
Libinput supports palm detection (https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libi...detection.html) since 1.5. The other parameters you mention are dependent on your de's settings ui to expose. Here are the relevant functions: https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libi...p__config.html
Work is ongoing to get the right pointer acceleration curve but moving to the rmi4 protocol (instead of emulating ps/2) will help many things.

I mean the minimum speed is waaaaay faster than it should be and since the acceleration is also messed up, no matter which value you set, I always end up having problems to point at things, requiring me to go back and forth with the cursor to hit the righr place.

While I know there's work being done to fix this, there's also the sensitivity and noise cancellation problems. Without setting FingerLow and FingerHigh in Synaptics, my touchpad is weirdly sensitive, clicking on stuff on its own while I'm moving the cursor and the like. I don't see how it's up to the DE to expose if there's no command line way to dealing with these values, which, in the Linux world, usually means there's no way to do so whatsoever.

[liam]

I mean the minimum speed is waaaaay faster than it should be and since the acceleration is also messed up, no matter which value you set, I always end up having problems to point at things, requiring me to go back and forth with the cursor to hit the righr place.

While I know there's work being done to fix this, there's also the sensitivity and noise cancellation problems. Without setting FingerLow and FingerHigh in Synaptics, my touchpad is weirdly sensitive, clicking on stuff on its own while I'm moving the cursor and the like. I don't see how it's up to the DE to expose if there's no command line way to dealing with these values, which, in the Linux world, usually means there's no way to do so whatsoever.

If this bothers you enough then do what I did: go here

https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/reporting_bugs.html

Follow the instructions.
File a bug.

Now, just based on what you've said it sounds like the touchpad is reporting the wrong dimensions (dpi is incorrect).
You can check this by following the instructions on that page (seriously, they are easy to follow and Peter is quick to respond and helpful).
To check the dimensions that udev is reporting run

udevadm info /sys/class/input/eventX

where eventX is whatever your touchpad is using (you can find this out by using the xinput utility)

The sensitivity issues probably mean that you need a quirk applied (quirks are hardware specific values that are stored in libinput's, and user's, hwdb). You can use the evdev tools that are listed on that page to see what the kernel is exposing and change some of the values using udev rules (that's how quirks are applied), but I'd suggest you just follow the procedure on that page for a proper fix.
Btw, what model laptop are you using?

[andrebrait]

If this bothers you enough then do what I did: go here

https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/reporting_bugs.html

Follow the instructions.
File a bug.

Now, just based on what you've said it sounds like the touchpad is reporting the wrong dimensions (dpi is incorrect).
You can check this by following the instructions on that page (seriously, they are easy to follow and Peter is quick to respond and helpful).
To check the dimensions that udev is reporting run

udevadm info /sys/class/input/eventX

where eventX is whatever your touchpad is using (you can find this out by using the xinput utility)

The sensitivity issues probably mean that you need a quirk applied (quirks are hardware specific values that are stored in libinput's, and user's, hwdb). You can use the evdev tools that are listed on that page to see what the kernel is exposing and change some of the values using udev rules (that's how quirks are applied), but I'd suggest you just follow the procedure on that page for a proper fix.
Btw, what model laptop are you using?

Thanks, will do as soon as I have some spare time.

It's a Dell Vostro 5470.

[liam]

Thanks, will do as soon as I have some spare time.

It's a Dell Vostro 5470.

This is the x/y dimensions of your touchpad: 111.40 mm / 76.40 mm
From this evemu record (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1017914) we know it is an elan touchpad.

This is the xinput list-props result:

$xinput list-props 13
Device 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad':
Device Enabled (139): 1
Coordinate Transformation Matrix (141): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000 libinput Tapping Enabled (273): 1
libinput Accel Speed (274): 0.215054
libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled (275): 1
libinput Send Events Modes Available (259): 1, 1
libinput Send Events Mode Enabled (260): 0, 0
libinput Left Handed Enabled (276): 0
libinput Scroll Methods Available (277): 1, 0, 0
libinput Scroll Method Enabled (278): 1, 0, 0
libinput Click Methods Available (279): 1, 1
libinput Click Method Enabled (280): 0, 1
Device Node (261): "/dev/input/event5"
Device Product ID (262): 2, 14

This is the bug report where I found this info: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1214477

So, from looking at https://github.com/wayland-project/l...el-quirks.hwdb it looks like he has a resolution quirk for elan touchpad but there may be a number of reasons why that's not working.
First, I'd check to make sure YOUR laptop actually has that touchpad.

[liam]

Thanks, will do as soon as I have some spare time.

It's a Dell Vostro 5470.

This is the x/y dimensions of your touchpad: 111.40 mm / 76.40 mm
From this evemu record (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1017914) we know it is an elan touchpad.

This is the xinput list-props result:

$xinput list-props 13
Device 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad':
Device Enabled (139): 1
Coordinate Transformation Matrix (141): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000 libinput Tapping Enabled (273): 1
libinput Accel Speed (274): 0.215054
libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled (275): 1
libinput Send Events Modes Available (259): 1, 1
libinput Send Events Mode Enabled (260): 0, 0
libinput Left Handed Enabled (276): 0
libinput Scroll Methods Available (277): 1, 0, 0
libinput Scroll Method Enabled (278): 1, 0, 0
libinput Click Methods Available (279): 1, 1
libinput Click Method Enabled (280): 0, 1
Device Node (261): "/dev/input/event5"
Device Product ID (262): 2, 14

This is the bug report where I found this info: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1214477

So, from looking at https://github.com/wayland-project/l...el-quirks.hwdb it looks like he has a resolution quirk for elan touchpad but there may be a number of reasons why that's not working.
First, I'd check to make sure YOUR laptop actually has that touchpad.