I have had a lot of issues with my Dell Venue 11 Pro and detection of the touchpad. I have tried a ton of different distributions as well as kernels and they all behave the same way.

The hardware is a bit non-standard. It's technically a tablet computer that shipped with Windows 8.1 and is upgradeable to Windows 10. It has a hardware keyboard that physically plugs into the tablet. I exclusively use it as a laptop and do not detach the keyboard.

Linux has a tough time detecting the touchpad. On some boots, everything seems great and on others, only the keyboard will work. I have tried detaching the screen and reattaching it to see if it would force detection of the touchpad. Sometimes this works but more often than not it will not. Other times it also makes the keyboard stop functioning as well.

I'm a novice Linux user and am not very well equipped to diagnose and fix this myself. I have tried posting in various distribution forums without much help to solve my issue.

Any suggestions or guidance would be very appreciated!

you first need to find out what "brand" it is.
find something to do with your touch pad. As this is a plugin device, it may not be initialized upon boot. Then one needs to figure out a way to cause it to be initialized and get discovered. It might be as easy as just moving your finger across it trying to activate it. big shot in the dark idea, mind you.

In using the above command I get the output of: "Synaptics T Pad V 01.31 Touchpad"

I will try booting while constantly swiping the pad to see if it helps with detection and edit this with results.

Edit: It was worth a shot, but this did not aid in detection to enable the touchpad.