How to make Synaptics touchpad work better on Linux?

Posted by whitequark on Super User See other posts from Super User or by whitequark
Published on 2011-01-14T21:01:57Z Indexed on 2011/01/14 21:55 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

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netbook

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touchpad

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synaptics

I have Debian Squeeze currently installed on a Samsung N250 netbook with a Synaptics touchpad. These touchpads are, generally, good, and everything works perfectly on Windows.

The support is extremely sucky on Linux through. Of course it has all the cool features like two-finger scrolling, but the cursor (or whatever is a replacement for cursor when scrolling) is trembling awfully. It trembles when I just keep the finger on touchpad, it shakes awfully if the finger is close to the top of touchpad, and when I'm scrolling with it (no matter with two fingers or one), the page shakes a lot too. None of this behavior is observed even in Windows XP with just the default drivers installed.

Here's the Xorg version:

$ Xorg -version

X.Org X Server 1.7.7
Release Date: 2010-05-04
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 i686 Debian
Current Operating System: Linux mannaz 2.6.32-5-686 #1 SMP Fri Dec 10 16:12:40 UTC 2010 i686
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-686 root=/dev/mapper/mannaz-root ro quiet splash
Build Date: 02 December 2010  01:08:37AM
xorg-server 2:1.7.7-10 (Julien Cristau <[email protected]>) 
Current version of pixman: 0.16.4

and here is synclient -l output: http://pastebin.com/Eqa6hGXP

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