I think I know what might be happening here... The firmware on these Synaptics touchpads supports i2c mode as well as psmouse mode. Older kernels prior to 3.11 didn't have very good i2c support and the firmware on the touchpad would fall back to psmouse mode. psmouse mode worked nicely on machines pre-loaded with 12.04 and probably worked OK up until 13.04. Once the Saucy kernels were introduced, the 3.11 kernels had better i2c support and thus the touchpad would load up in i2c mode.
Synaptics was supposed to be working on some hid-multitouch i2c drivers and I thought they would have been upstreamed by now. Without them, the touchpad will operate in *very* basic i2c mode. This also explains the difference between what you see in xinput with the older kernels (PS/2) versus newer ones (DLL060A:00 06CB:2734). So, yes, blacklisting i2c_hid is one way to work around the problem. I'll find out what the deal is with Synaptics... -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel Packages, which is subscribed to linux in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1265885 Title: regression with respect touchpad Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu: In Progress Bug description: This regression occurs somewhere between 3.11.0-14-generic (latest on saucy) and 3.13.0-031300rc6-generic (a test kernel). On the earlier kernel, I actually get settings for setting up my touchpad in the unity interface. With the updated kernel, those options disappear. I only get one set of options both my mouse and my touchpad instead of each one independently. It means that I can't set the pointer speed differently or turn on natural scrolling for my touchpad. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1265885/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages Post to : kernel-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp