Mercury Avatar (Elantech) touchpad multitouch and gesture are not supported?

Question

I'm a bit of a linux noob, but I'm smart enough to figure out how to update the software and such. I've run apt-get update and upgrade and installed touchegg. I cannot figure out how to enable multitouch and gestures.

I would honestly settle for just two finger vertical scrolling. I can live without pinch zoom, rotate, etc (but would be nice to have), but I'm going nuts without an easy way to scroll.

I'm honestly just not experienced enough to know what to look for, and I've done more than my fair share of googling, and now I think it's time to ask for help. Anyone know what needs to be done here to get two finger scroll (and hopefully more) enabled?

Answer 1

Gestures such as pinch, zoom, rotate aren't support by the x.org. You may be able to get scrolling to work depends on how your touchpad interfaces with Ubuntu.

I'm assuming your touchpad is currently working. If so you should be able to configure it with Synaptics Touchpad software.

Alternatively your touchpad may only be recognized as a mouse input device, as happens occassionally with Elantech touchpads. To you check this by running xinput --list and checking whether your device is recognized as an Elantech touchpad or perhaps a generic mouse input device. If the device is only recognized as a generic mouse device you'll likely have to install the psmouse drivers to get your touchpad properly recognized.

Let me know how you go with the xinput and i'll help you troubleshoot

Answer 2

Which Ubuntu version are you using? If you are using 12.10 then, two-finger vertical and horizontal scrolling should be available to you without doing any extra work.

Go to System Settings > Mouse and Touchpad > Touchpad

and select two finger scrolling.

If you want to be able to do more than that, then you might want to have a look at this question.

Good Luck.

Answer 3

To activate multi-touch for Elantech touchpads in Ubuntu, try this:

Download this package.

cd ~/Downloads
sudo dkms ldtarball psmouse-elantech-x551c.tar.gz
sudo dkms install -m psmouse -v elantech-x551c
sudo rmmod psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse