Xorg 1.9 (or at least the latest Synaptics driver) doesn't seem to like my lappy's touchpad...

I just did an update to Xorg 1.9 (was hesitant at first because of performance issues when I tried it before; everything's fine now WRT that), and now my cursor stutters periodically when I move it around (no matter how slowly/quickly). It doesn't happen too often, but it's enough to be really annoying...

I've tried searching Google and LQ for hints on this issue, and I only found this ancient thread, which came to no (relevant) conclusions. Of course, removing the new Synaptics driver and reinstalling the older one renders the touchpad completely useless (the solution is never that easy, is it? ).

I do notice that it seems to get worse when I put more of my finger on the touchpad as opposed to just the tip...I don't know what this could mean, though.

I am having the exact same problem. The only thing I could do was to remove the synaptics driver and just use the evdev. That made the mouse "function" correctly in that it didn't stutter. But no scrolling or tapping or anything else with it. So that doesn't work as a solution for me.

Anybody have any ideas?

I think I just fixed my problem. I'm running Gentoo but the Arch linux wiki helped me.

I put this

in this file:

I ran Xorg -configure without having any /etc/X11/xorg.conf file

Then when I ran everything seemed to be working.

I'm going to install a windows manager of some sort to really try it out.

Keep our fingers crossed!!

Wow, just ignore that last post. I forgot to put synaptics back into my INPUT_DEVICES in the make.conf file...

Nevermind...

Back to the drawing board

I'm back again. I installed the synaptics driver. Then I made sure nothing was reading from the evdev driver anymore. I reconfigured xorg and built twm and xterm to test. It seems like its working. I'm going to install fluxbox now to further test it, but it seems like my earlier posts fix is actually working.

Ok, it went back to the way it was before. Maybe I was just crazy and thought it was fixed. I'm not posting again until I find a definite fix.... :-)

Well, at least someone has the same issue...

Just out of curiosity, what model laptop do you have? Mine's a Samsung R580. I'm not sure if this is the touchpad, but the only thing in lspci that I can tell isn't something non-mouse-related is this:

"Signal processing controller" to me means that it could be the touchpad. Don't quote me on that, though.

I have my computer running fine now, with the touchpad working. What I did was downgrade the synaptics driver. In gentoo, it was giving me 1.3.0 so I masked that package and installed 1.2.1. I also am using a downgraded xorg. I think I brought it down to 1.7.6.

This is definitely not an ideal situation. I'd love for it to work with the current stable driver and xorg-server, but at least I can use my laptop now.

I wonder if I should report a bug for gentoo....

Well, unfortunately that's not really an option for me here...I don't have a local copy of all the Xorg packages < 1.9 (), and the Arch repos stay as up-to-date as possible, so I can't downgrade the whole of Xorg. Plus which, I was having significant issues with the newer versions of certain libraries when used with Xorg 1.8 (particularly with GNOME MPlayer freezing when going from fullscreen to window), so that probably wouldn't be a good idea anyway.

I suppose if one hasn't already been filed, a bug report would be a good idea at this point...

For now I suppose I'll just have to get used to it (e.g. by not putting very much of my finger on the touchpad, as that seems to help).

This thread may have grown old, but I haven't forgotten about it.

SOLVED!

The issue had to do with the Synaptics driver configuration: The "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ/W" default parameters were small enough that it was detecting my finger as if it were two, so it was registering emulated middle clicks where I wasn't trying to make them. After setting the parameters both to 100 (ridiculously huge), the stuttering problem went away! Of course, now I won't be able to do a middle click by tapping the touchpad with two fingers, but at least I can use the touchpad normally now.