Better Support For Newer Synaptics Laptop Touchpads Coming To Linux 5.10

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 7 October 2020 at 12:00 AM EDT. 16 Comments
HARDWARE
Synaptics has contributed RMI4 F3A support for Linux 5.10 to better the support for newer laptop touchpads.

Synaptics' RMI4 Function 3A (F3A) is used by newer touchpads for GPIO support, this is needed to support buttons on TouchPads and Clickpads. Among the devices benefiting from the RMI4 F4A support are the likes of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen1 and P1 Gen2 laptops.

A Synaptics engineer contributed the F3A support and a follow up patch by Jason Donenfeld to help support recent Lenovo ThinkPads. That was followed by a separate patch for enabling InterTouch on the ThinkPad P1/X1E Gen2 devices.

This Synaptics touchpad work that is now queued in the input-next code for Linux 5.10 was motivated at least in part by Lenovo's recent ambitions around Linux support. It's quite interesting to watch the work materialize that Lenovo has been engaging in with Red Hat and the company's hardware partners. Linux 5.10's merge window is expected to begin next week while the stable kernel debut won't happen until around the end of the calendar year.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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