Lenovo Thinkpad G580 touchpad problems since 24.04 upgrade

[mjwattie]

I’m using a fairly old laptop (Lenovo G580) and recently, after installing a new SSD, decided to install U24 rather than U22 which was running on it previously. However, compared to the touchpad options in System Settings in 22, the options in 24 are severely limited e.g. setting edge width, setting tap pressure, configuring tap behaviour (e.g. corner tap for right click) all missing. Having run xinput list I notice that the touchpad is shown as an Elantech touchpad:

Now I’m pretty sure that in my previous U22 install the touchpad was treated as a Synaptic device, which I’m assuming is why there were so many additional config options available. As such, is there any way I can replace the current Elantech device drivers with Synaptic device drivers and restore the touchpad functionality I previously enjoyed? Using the synaptic drivers on U22 I was able to set config values using the command prompt, and to create config files which loaded at start-up.

From reading around I believe that synaptics no longer works by default in Ubuntu and touchpad drivers are now handled by libinput, which is woefully short on touchpad configuration options. However, the multiple threads on how it might be possible to install synaptics and then force the touchpad to use the synaptics drivers instead of libinput are confusing, contradictory and full of comments along the lines of ‘I tried this and my keyboard stopped working’. Which makes me very reluctant to try it, being so inexperienced in Ubuntu.

So, can anyone give me a clear, simple, step by step guide to how to install synaptics drivers, force my system to use those over libinput, but not bork my system? There are actually only two specific things I want to do:

1. Reduce the touchpad sensitivity
2. Slightly increase the portion of the right side of the touchpad that I can use for scrolling

Thanks.

[halogen2]

First check whether the synaptics driver is installed -

apt-cache policy xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

If it doesn’t show as installed,

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

I don’t remember if a reboot is needed at this point, but definitely you’ll need to at least log out & log back in log into an Xorg session - not a Wayland session.

When I was seeking this on one of my own systems, this was enough to get it working for me. You can check that it works for you by looking for the Synaptics properties in the output of

xinput list-props 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad'

@mjwattie

There are actually only two specific things I want to do:

1. Reduce the touchpad sensitivity
2. Slightly increase the portion of the right side of the touchpad that I can use for scrolling

For (1) this might be an alternative to switching to the synaptics driver. For what it’s worth, I switched to use that method on my main system for my USB touchpad, and setting touchpad sensitivity how I wanted ended up physically measuring the size of my touchpad and entering the real actual dimensions in the suggested command.

[mjwattie]

Great stuff thanks, and the output is:

So I’m assuming this means synaptics drivers are not installed, I’ll go ahead and try the install tomorrow, cheers

[mjwattie]

Apologies it’s taken so long to update but I have to admit I’ve been putting it off and putting it off for fear of borking my system. But in the end it got so infuriating I went ahead and ran the Synaptics install commands you highlighted, and of course it’s worked perfectly!

Really happy and thanks again for your help with this