I fear I am stuffed and have to wait for a new driver/kernel here but there's no harm in asking… Really grateful if someone can help me out.

I have been using Mint Linux KDE edition for about three years now.

Yesterday, to my surprise, my wife gave me the gift of a new laptop to replace my ailing c50 netbook.
Hurrah! It came with Windows 8 which I had to dump but installed Mint Linux 17.0 64bit KDE edition.

The laptop is el cheapo (but I am NOT complaining!) ASUS x200MA with n2840 processor and 2GB RAM.
It is identical to my four core n2920 – also an ASUS x200. The hardware should be exactly the same bar RAM size and processor.

Only, on the new machine KDE does not allow me to change the touchpad settings in system settings. I am told 'Synaptics driver is not installed (or is not used.).'

This is a total nightmare for me because the initial settings on the touchpad are FAR too sensitive!!! You only have to breath on the touchpad for it to register movement. On the 4 core machine the touchpad is detected and I have been able to lower the sensitivity of the touchpad and get the machine running OK.

On the new 2 core machine it will not accept the synaptic touchpad exists!! It works, after a fashion, but the default settings are near unusable. I am guessing this is a new revision of the x200 (revision G rather than revision C as it were,) using a slightly newer touchpad design which Linux does not understand.

I have installed Linux KDE 64 bit 17.0, 17.1 and 17.0 32 bit. I have all tried installing a new kernel via the Mint updater... all to no avail! I have tried Kubuntu version 14. No joy there. The hardware should be the same on both machines but the touchpad is detected on one but not the other.

I am at a loss. As it stands, the machine is being put into cold storage until there is a version of Linux that can detect the touchpad. Reading around, others seem to have had similar problems with Lenovo and people have had to wait for new drivers/kernel. I guess that's me.

Sigh.

I have attempted an install of PCLinuxOS to see if a non-Debian based distro would resolve the problem.

Does not recognise any touchpad at all.

This machine is going to have to go into cold storage it seems until Linux catches up with the hardware.

atom6502,

It may need to stay in cold storage for a while since the touchpads on many Asus laptops are affected by this bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...x/+bug/1314198

I've been doing some Googling on this and seems to be pretty common on Asus laptop w/Linux. Some people suggest checking Asus website and see if there is any BIOS updates.

I also read you might need to install Synaptics driver for Linux mint and see if it works. The link below may contain an older package but do an "apt-cache search xserver-xorg-input-synaptics" to see if it's in the repos.

http://community.linuxmint.com/softw...nput-synaptics

Hi Erik.

Thanks for your input. I have installed xserver-xorg-input-synaptics - I did that as a first step at trying to fix this. I too have been googling and, yes, this seems to be a common problem with ASUS laptops and, yes, BIOS seems to figure. But that risks bricking the laptop, voiding warrenty or explaining to ASUS, "Yes, I know I wiped Windows off the machine but that has nothing to do with the BIOS..." in Indonesia.

But...Good news! I have a fix!!

It's clunky but it seems to work, although it is late at night and I dead busy tomorrow and I need time to experiment and fully test the fix before confirming.

I took the risk and forced a manual upgrade to the 4.0 kernel. This now means I have an unsupportable version of Mint 17 but... I get the touchpad controls enabled! In fact, the touchpad became usable immediately without changing any settings, though I have increased noise detection.

Synaptic does not like the alien kernel and wants it ripped out but I guess I can use the software manager which does not seem to protest.

Anyway, it now looks like I can use the lovely gift from my wife!

atom6502,

I am glad that you have fixed the touchpad with the 4.0 kernel upgrade.

Thanks. Sorry, I missed your earlier post somehow.

Today is full so no time for further testing but indications are that no hardware has been affected by the new kernel. So looking good.

Cheers!