I've recently bought a new Acer TravelMate B115-M, which came with some CLI-only version of Linux Linpus pre-installed. I've tried, Arch, Fedora, openSUSE and even OpenBSD. On all the Linux distros the touchpad cursor jumps erratically around the screen, after a few minutes of normal behavior, both under Xorg and under Wayland. With BSD it starts to scroll up and down, so the problem differs (only) slightly on BSD. It only stops when I press the key combination to disable the touchscreen, and then re-enable it. The BIOS also has a option to switch between Basic touchpad mode and Advanced mode. I've noticed that in basic mode the psmouse module is loaded and in advanced mode the i2c_hid module is loaded at bootup. Switching from advanced to basic, or the other way around didn't accomplish anything, the cursor is still dancing when it feels like dancing...
Can anybody help me? Could it be because of the drivers, the kernel, the BIOS or because of the hardware?

Hi:

Welcome to LQ.

It could be any one of those. The thing is that's hard to tell.
It could be that the touchpad drivers need to be upgraded?
Look on the Acer website and see if there are driver updates for your touchpad.
http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

I'm not good with this type of hardware issue but I'll post the specifications of your machine so that others that can help you can see what your machine has.

http://www.pcworld.com/product/14294...-notebook.html

Is this your machine?
http://www.acer.co.uk/ac/en/GB/conte...l/NX.VA1EK.002

What kernel is BSD using?

Thank you!
That is not really my machine, but it is in fact very similar, it is Acer TM B115-M-41RQ, the main difference is that my machine is localized for Germany and it came without windows, only some bare-bones version of linpus (which I doubt that it bares any significance to my touchpad issues).
I installed OpenBSD 5.7 with the generic kernel.

Ok-

Well I'm not an expert on hardware or drivers but I have an idea that may work.
Notice I said: "may work"-

Your could try recompiling the kernel and if that doesn't work install a higher version of the kernel.

Sometimes with hardware or performance issue's trying one of the 2 task's mentioned above helps.

http://www.wikihow.com/Compile-the-Linux-Kernel
http://askubuntu.com/questions/16329...ile-the-kernel

I would try recompiling first before installing a new kernel.
Here's an in depth article that explains how to-

https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorial...-a-perfect-fit

Tank you again for your reply, but I am already on the 4.1 branch and I have been trying all releases from 3.16 above. I've found a temporary solution, to use a tiling, keyboard only window manager.

Your Welcome.
I'm surprised that a higher version of the kernel isn't helping.

So....your using a tiling keyboard only with a window manager.
Do you mean a on screen keyboard GUI?
(haven't heard of tiling)

Sorry for my awkward phrasing, I meant a tiling WM (=keyboard only), like http://i3wm.org/

Looks like something that a Developer would use.

I'm not familiar with it, sorry.

A late reply, I know ;-)

We have 147 of those B115 in use for 6 weeks now and we have send already 12 of them back with the same problem as you describe.
It's a hardware problem: Acer has replaced all 12 touchpads under warranty.

1 members found this post helpful.

So did I eventually. Yes, it was indeed a hardware problem, and they changed the touchpad. Thanks for your reply!

Your Welcome-