My touchpad works like a touchscreen

Question

So I recently installed Ubuntu on my Alienware/Dell and everything was fine until I upgraded to 16.10.

After that out of nowhere my touchpad started acting like a touchscreen (or a graphics tablet) i.e. the pointer jumps to wherever I touch on the pad(like its mapped to the screen.

I tried everything I could find, namely remapping xinput or even removing and adding the mouse module psmouse but nothing worked. I could not find any other solution to this.

Output of xinput

⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SIGMACHIP Usb Mouse                       id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=14   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Integrated_Webcam_HD                      id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Intel HID events                          id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=15   [slave  keyboard (3)]

↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad is the one that I am talking about.

Output of xinput list-props 14

Device 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad':
Device Enabled (165):   1
Coordinate Transformation Matrix (167): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
Device Accel Profile (295): 0
Device Accel Constant Deceleration (296):   1.000000
Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration (297):   1.000000
Device Accel Velocity Scaling (298):    10.000000
Device Product ID (284):    2, 7
Device Node (285):  "/dev/input/event6"
Evdev Axis Inversion (299): 0, 0
Evdev Axis Calibration (300):   <no items>
Evdev Axes Swap (301):  0
Axis Labels (302):  "Abs MT Position X" (292), "Abs MT Position Y" (293), "Abs MT Pressure" (294), "Abs Tool Width" (291), "None" (0), "None" (0), "None" (0)
Button Labels (303):    "Button Left" (168), "Button Unknown" (287), "Button Right" (170), "Button Wheel Up" (171), "Button Wheel Down" (172)
Evdev Scrolling Distance (304): 0, 0, 0
Evdev Middle Button Emulation (305):    0
Evdev Middle Button Timeout (306):  50
Evdev Third Button Emulation (307): 0
Evdev Third Button Emulation Timeout (308): 1000
Evdev Third Button Emulation Button (309):  3
Evdev Third Button Emulation Threshold (310):   20
Evdev Wheel Emulation (311):    0
Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes (312):   0, 0, 4, 5
Evdev Wheel Emulation Inertia (313):    10
Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout (314):    200
Evdev Wheel Emulation Button (315): 4
Evdev Drag Lock Buttons (316):  0

I also noticed that people out there get a problem opposite to mine (i.e. their touchscreen acts like a touchpad)

Please suggest what to do.

Answer 1

There is no user space touchpad driver installed. That is why it is treated like a relative device.

Run

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-all

and restart the session.

If you have hwe-16.04 packages installed, you need to run

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-all-hwe-16.04

Answer 2

Setting you are looking for is relative- or absolute tracking mode.

This is hardware specific, to find your device, list your devices with the xinput command (without any options). Look for a "slave" device, which is the actual device, not the master device which is virtual.

xinput set-mode ABSOLUTE|RELATIVE will change the mode. Device name can be the Xid number reported by xinput or the actual name, including the quotation marks: xinput set-mode "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" RELATIVE. Xinput options: https://www.x.org/archive/current/doc/man/man1/xinput.1.xhtml

If you are using a Wacom pad or tablet simply open the wacom settings window found in ubuntu system settings and click the relevant option. For more on Wacom see help.ubuntu at https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/wacom-mode.html