I experienced this problem when doing a *clean installation* of Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.3. I confirmed that the synaptics driver was in use. apt- get update; apt-get upgrade did not resolve the problem.
I was able to get the touchpad settings working by uninstalling the synaptics driver and installing libinput. I had to upgrade a held-back dependency in order to do this, and I'm not sure if the result was entirely kosher. It seems like a clean installation should not have this problem, nor is it clear to me how the synaptics support got dropped in Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.3 when the upstream version affected was 3.20, and 16.04.3 is still documented as including GNOME 3.18. I can understand how these kinds of issues can occur in an upgrade to a new major version such as 17.10, but it's really a big boo-boo to have this sort of breakage in the routine updates to an LTS release. It would at least be helpful to mention this issue in the release notes for UG 16.04.3. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to xorg in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1686081 Title: If -synaptics is installed, GNOME Mouse & Touchpad Settings doesn't work Status in Release Notes for Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in xorg package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Status in xubuntu-meta package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in xorg source package in Artful: Confirmed Status in xubuntu-meta source package in Artful: Fix Released Bug description: I'm splitting this issue off from LP: #1685542 (which made xserver- xorg-input-all no longer recommend xserver-xorg-input-synaptics) for tracking the remaining issues. gnome-control-center only supports libinput. If xserver-xorg-input- synaptics is installed (because it's used by some desktops which haven't been ported to libinput yet), synaptics overrides libinput. That makes gnome-control-center's Mouse & Touchpad settings panel only show basic settings and important configurations don't work. Questions --------- 1. Which desktops/apps still need -synaptics? - Unity - Xfce? - LXDE? LXQt? All the other major desktops have already been ported (LP: #1417980) 2. Can these apps be ported or removed before 18.04 LTS is released? 3. Can the desktops be ported and how bad is it if they are not ported and -synaptics is no longer available? 4. If -synaptics can't be removed completely from 18.04 LTS, does it make sense to have gnome-control-center Conflicts: xserver-xorg-input- synaptics? 5. Is there any other way we can fix this conflict? To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-release-notes/+bug/1686081/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
