[ Bcc debian-x and debian-gtk-gnome, discussion on -devel as the topic crosses the boundaries of multiple teams ]
Hello, it has been some time that GNOME 3.20 users have been unable to configure their touchpad[1] because: 1/ xserver-xorg-input-synaptics cherry-picked an upstream commit[2] that gives the priority to the synaptics driver to handle touchpads 2/ xserver-xorg-input-synaptics is always installed as a dependency of xserver-xorg-input-all 3/ gnome-control-center 3.20 uses libinput and no longer support synaptics Clearly points 1 and 2 are in conflict: the upstream explanation is that that the package should not be installed by default and we do install it by default. Looking at https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-xorg/debian/xorg.git I see that we have unreleased changes to not install the synaptics driver by default. Timo or Emilio, can you upload those changes? Even with this driver no longer installed by default, this will not fix the setup for users who are upgrading. Do you have any suggestion on how we should handle upgrades? My best idea right now is that gnome-control-center's postint should do something like this: if [ -e /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/60-libinput.conf ] && \ dpkg -s xserver-xorg-input-synaptics >/dev/null 2>&1 && \ [ ! -e /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-libinput.conf ] then echo "Creating /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-libinput.conf to workaround xserver-xorg-input-synaptics" mkdir -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d ln -sf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/60-libinput.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-libinput.conf fi And it should add a README.debian explaining that /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-libinput.conf can be replaced with an empty file if you want to let the synaptics driver to take precedence. The other solution is to add a "Conflicts: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics" but this is rather extreme. Although it is somewhat in line with the upstream views on the topic. The best solution would be to have gnome-control-center handle properly synaptics-managed touchpads but I don't think that upstream developers are very open to that idea given that they have dropped the support on purpose. What do you think? I also wonder what is the status of libinput support in other desktop environments. Do KDE/XFCE/LXDE/MATE/Cinnamon/... properly configure touchpads managed with the libinput driver? If not, then the removal of the synaptics driver is likely to negatively affect them. In any case, I would like to see this fixed soon as we have many users bitten by this (I got many reports on Kali) and I'm willing to help where needed. [1] Upstream tickets somewhat related: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=747956 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=764257 [2] https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2016-May/thread.html#49782 http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-xorg/driver/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics.git/commit/?id=ca44e3fbf8271712db94bf8f38e363f34b7e33af -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Support Debian LTS: http://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html Learn to master Debian: http://debian-handbook.info/get/