21 October 2012

[FIX] Laptop's Touchpad/Trackpad Not Working On Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal



In case your touchpad (aka trackpad) is not working despite having enabled it or re-installed its driver, you can follow this article which may solve your problem. In this tutorial we will see two solutions for enabling a laptop touchpad under Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal. It is also possible to apply it on Ubuntu 12.04 or Linux Mint 13.

Solution  1

Open the terminal and enable the touchpad with this command:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad touchpad-enabled 'true'

Solution 2

If the first method is not working for you, you can try this tip:

- Via the terminal, list your devices with this command:

xinput --list

Here are the outputs returned for my laptop:

 ~$ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                     id=2 [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer            id=4 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SIGMACHIP Usb Mouse                id=11 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad           id=14 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                   id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard          id=5 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                     id=6 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                        id=7 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                        id=8 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                      id=9 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ USB2.0 0.3M UVC WebCam           id=10 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Asus Laptop extra buttons            id=12 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard          id=13 [slave  keyboard (3)]

- My touchpad is identified as id=14 (change it with yours), you can get more info about it with this command:

xinput --list-props 14

If it is disabled (0), you will get these outputs:

 xinput --list-props 14Device 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad':
Device Enabled (137): 0

- To enable the touchpad, run this command (replace 14 with your own touchpad ID):

xinput set-int-prop 14 "Device Enabled" 8 1