Help me make Ubuntu Trackpad Accessibility at least as good as Win7
April 19, 2013 10:52 AM Subscribe
I have a good friend with dystonia, which limits his physical dexterity greatly. He has a new Acer Aspire netbook, running Ubuntu 12.04LTS. His old machine ran Windows 7. The accessibility for keyboard in Ubuntu is pretty good, offering the same sort of sticky keys, and repetitive key blocking and so forth. The problem is with the trackpad. Under Win7, he can left-click once on the trackpad button, which then treats it the same as if he continued to hold the button down until the button is clicked again to release it. Ubuntu will not do this out of the box.
We have searched the Ubuntu and Linux physical accessibility wikis and articles, and AskUbuntu and Launchpad, hoping to find a script that will allow us to modify the trackpad. All this has done is put us off on interesting derails, a few keyboard shortcuts that will make his computing life easier, but not the trackpad modifier.
We know that this works on Windows7 on the new Acer, because it came with Win7 starter and we've made this a dual-boot machine. I hate to say it but as paltry as the Windows accessibility is, it is better in many ways than Ubuntu. However, this is the one trackpad mod he has been asking for, and I would love to help him realize it.
Can anyone offer advice, direction, or maybe even a script?
We have searched the Ubuntu and Linux physical accessibility wikis and articles, and AskUbuntu and Launchpad, hoping to find a script that will allow us to modify the trackpad. All this has done is put us off on interesting derails, a few keyboard shortcuts that will make his computing life easier, but not the trackpad modifier.
We know that this works on Windows7 on the new Acer, because it came with Win7 starter and we've made this a dual-boot machine. I hate to say it but as paltry as the Windows accessibility is, it is better in many ways than Ubuntu. However, this is the one trackpad mod he has been asking for, and I would love to help him realize it.
Can anyone offer advice, direction, or maybe even a script?
If that doesn't work, try posting on askubuntu or irc.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:43 AM on April 20, 2013
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:43 AM on April 20, 2013
Response by poster: trig , the description does look to be exactly what he needs. I haven't been able to get with him in the past two days (explanation too long, not needed) but I will try it today.
posted by beelzbubba at 1:49 PM on April 21, 2013
posted by beelzbubba at 1:49 PM on April 21, 2013
Response by poster: trig, I will have to read up more on the hardware used on the Acer Aspire One, and hope that eventually I might get an answer on AskUbuntu. That's not a knock on AU, I find it very useful. The specific convergence of Acer Aspire, the non-Synaptics touchpad, and the Xorg.conf is a small set, and I haven't yet found an answer. When I edited the .conf file, the touchpad stopped working entirely.
My friend can't use a mouse as efficiently as the touchpad, so he is now back to Win7 while I figure this out.
Thanks for the suggestion, though. I think if Acer were a little more accommodating, we would have been successful.
posted by beelzbubba at 8:15 AM on April 28, 2013
My friend can't use a mouse as efficiently as the touchpad, so he is now back to Win7 while I figure this out.
Thanks for the suggestion, though. I think if Acer were a little more accommodating, we would have been successful.
posted by beelzbubba at 8:15 AM on April 28, 2013
Best answer: Hi beelzbubba,
I'll try to look into it if I have time in the next week or two, but there's unfortunately a good chance that I won't. What specific model is the aspire? (Googling shows an Elantech trackpad?)
Another good place to ask is the archlinux forums, just to see whether anyone has that hardware and is able to get it working. It's not Ubuntu/Debian, but their forums are very good and it's a very helpful and knowledgable community.
(Just in case you haven't, I would also search google for "[trackpad manufacturer] linux" rather than just AskUbuntu; gets you a wider haul.)
One last suggestion: there's the option of using an external touchpad. I've never used one with linux so I have no specific recommendations, but it might work if driver compatibility is the problem.
Good luck to both of you.
posted by trig at 1:48 PM on April 29, 2013
I'll try to look into it if I have time in the next week or two, but there's unfortunately a good chance that I won't. What specific model is the aspire? (Googling shows an Elantech trackpad?)
Another good place to ask is the archlinux forums, just to see whether anyone has that hardware and is able to get it working. It's not Ubuntu/Debian, but their forums are very good and it's a very helpful and knowledgable community.
(Just in case you haven't, I would also search google for "[trackpad manufacturer] linux" rather than just AskUbuntu; gets you a wider haul.)
One last suggestion: there's the option of using an external touchpad. I've never used one with linux so I have no specific recommendations, but it might work if driver compatibility is the problem.
Good luck to both of you.
posted by trig at 1:48 PM on April 29, 2013
Response by poster: While never completely resolved--my friend had to go back home before we had a solution--the best answer here is the [trackpad manufacturer] linux search. This has given me the greatest number of possible solutions. While I am completely on board with linux on my home and protable computers, there are just a couple of nagging hardware problems that put it out of reach (literally) for some disabled users. Video camera drivers won't work with iSight hardware, for example, and the trackpad issue has come up for me/us on Thinkpads as well as on the Asus and Acer netbooks.
posted by beelzbubba at 8:13 AM on July 31, 2013
posted by beelzbubba at 8:13 AM on July 31, 2013
Try one of the linux on thinkpads mailing lists for thinkpads in the future, maybe. I have the feeling the linux on thinkpad community is very good and try to get each model to total compatibility with linux. You may find someone who's willing to help code up:
Under Win7, he can left-click once on the trackpad button, which then treats it the same as if he continued to hold the button down until the button is clicked again to release it. Ubuntu will not do this out of the box
and also push it upstream to help others.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:50 PM on July 31, 2013
Under Win7, he can left-click once on the trackpad button, which then treats it the same as if he continued to hold the button down until the button is clicked again to release it. Ubuntu will not do this out of the box
and also push it upstream to help others.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:50 PM on July 31, 2013
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Looking now at that man page, is this what you need?
Option "LockedDrags" "boolean"
If off, a tap-and-drag gesture ends when you release the finger. If on, the gesture is active until you tap a second time, or until LockedDragTimeout expires. Property: "Synaptics Locked Drags"
posted by trig at 11:59 AM on April 19, 2013