I've spent two weeks on this, its driving me insane. I've posted everywhere with no help.

My friend gave me a prototype tablet and the touchscreen works in Win7, OpenSUSE, Fedora and MeeGo, but i can't get it to work in Ubuntu and I don't know why.

I've contacted the manufacturer of the tablet, and the touchscreen and they're telling me they don't and won't support Linux. is there something i can do to use whatever is making it work in Fedora and OpenSUSE to make it work in Ubuntu?

I don't have an x86-based touchscreen device, I'd start by looking at which modules each distro's Xorg is loading

Dr, thanks for replying, i've uploaded a Xorg.0.log here:

http://pastebin.com/2pxFwH3G

You'll see that it records lots of [ 385.616] [dix] Unknown event type 35. No filter

I've also uploaded the hwinfo here:

http://pastebin.com/kXwtJcdX

Maybe something will catch your eye.

Nothing that catches my untrained eye.

One thought - if it's an Xorg-related problem, it might help to use the same /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for both Ubuntu and Fedora. If neither uses an xorg.conf file, you can create one in Fedora (as root in a terminal window: Xorg -configure) then move the xorg.conf.new file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and reboot (or restart X). If the xorg.conf file works in Fedora, try using the same file with Ubuntu - you might have to adjust the ModulePath in the Files section, but that should bethe only difference between Ubuntu and Fedora.

Put Fedora or OpenSuse back on it and see why it works. Most likely the screen has native support. Most of the touch screens are one of two models.

So i'm wondering what exactly does "native support" mean. Well, I understand that it boils down to "it just works" but why? Where its ability to understand the touchscreen coded? i know its a deep question but two weeks of frustration can't go unexplained!

A driver and maybe some application software to allow the device to be used.

I guess you could try to hope you can figure it out. Or you can install one of the ones that works and find out why it does.

The ignornant one asks a question out of ignorance: will the evdev work with the touchscreen? And, if it does work, does it provide the full experience?

I'd be happy to test it out. Let me see if I can find out how.

no luck on figuring out how to test EVDEV, any suggestions?

Since X typically runs without an xorg.conf file, perhaps the way to test Ubuntu would be to
1. boot Fedora on the tablet
2. generate an xorg.conf file
3. copy that file out to a temporary storage device,
4. grab a device from which you can boot the tablet
5. on your desktop/laptop/netbook, install Ubuntu with persistent storage on the device from step 4
6. boot your desktop/laptop/netbook from the Ubuntu device
7. copy the Fedora xorg.conf file to Ubuntu's /etc/X11/xorg.conf
8. boot Ubuntu on the tablet and see if it works.

I'm sure I just read a thread on here where somebody was having pretty much the same problem and creating an xorg.conf with the relevant entries worked.