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Previously I had to take my hard drive out of my laptop and plug it into my desktop, because the Fedora installer was not working on my new laptop. On a side note, with Kubuntu I have never had an installer issue before.

If I were to install Kubuntu, it would have to be the newer version (14.04), because Kubuntu 12.04 has a kernel that's too old for my laptop, which was causing many hardware problems due to unsupported hardware in the kernel. Now on version 14.04 I'm having problems connecting to wireless networks, both on my laptop and desktop. This is why I chose Fedora, but once again I am having problems. :(

The problem I'm having in Fedora right now is that the bottom half of my touchpad is unresponsive. If I start moving my mouse from the top half of the touchpad, I can go down into the unresponsive region and move there. However, as soon as I lift my finger from the touchpad the region becomes unresponsive again.

In Kubuntu 14.04 I also have this problem; however, it only happens if I have side scrolling enabled. Here on Fedora 20 it doesn't matter if vertical and horizontal side scrolling is enabled - it doesn't work either way! I even tried to disable all the advanced functions leaving only the basing mouse movement, but still that did not fix the problem.

Please give me any suggestions of what the problem could be; and if possible please let me know how to fix this issue within Fedora. Thank you!

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  • If you removed the pointless attack against Windows 8.1 ( and the unnecessary vulgar language ) I will remove the downvote. The hardware problem is likely caused by the lack of drivers. Of course it also could be an actual hardware problem. You don't really indicate if it actually works in any operating system.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Apr 6, 2014 at 2:47
  • I fixed all the grammar for you! Come on man, learn some grammar! That's probably the reason for all the downvotes.
    – superuser
    Commented Apr 6, 2014 at 3:16
  • 1
    @techaddict Thank you for fixing my grammar. I'm some what linguistically impaired, so sorry for that.
    – Jasper Creyf
    Commented Apr 6, 2014 at 4:25

2 Answers 2

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If your touchpad works fine on another operating system, then the problem is [most likely] the touchpad driver.

The number one problem with all Linux-based or UNIX-based operating systems (redhat, linux, fedora, centos, etc) is that drivers are limited and poorly supported. In my opinion, it is one of the main reasons why more people don't UNIX-based operating systems, despite being more stable, more secure, and faster than Windows (among other things). The other reason being a lack of supported software. However, that is besides the point.

If you intend to use a UNIX-based operating system, you may need to try several different distros to see which one has the most up to date and supported drivers (the least driver issues) for your specific laptop. For example, if you bought a new laptop, you'd have to start over and try several distros until you find the right one.

Sometimes with UNIX-based distros, you get lucky and everything works. However, in my experience, most of the time there is always one or another error.

The best thing to do, if you're just getting started with UNIX distros, is to try another one. Trust me, it will save you many days of frustration trying to get drivers to work if you don't know how to compile a driver yourself.

If you are experienced (which, based on the question, I assume you are not), sometimes the best thing to do when encountering severe driver issues, after verifying that you are using the latest and most up to date drivers (this can sometimes be a chore), is to compile the drivers yourself. However, this can be a chore.

A key thing to understand when starting out with UNIX-based distros, is that more common and popular distros like Ubuntu are going to be more widely supported hardware-wise (like having up to date and better drivers). Sure, Ubuntu has it's issues, and there are some techies who despise it. However, Ubuntu is one that can help you get your foot in the door with UNIX-based distros.

For you specifically, I would do the following:

  • First, search for better touchpad drivers.
  • If you cannot find one (could take several hours of searching, especially for a newbie), you could try Fedora-specific forums to try to see if someone had the same issue with the same laptop, and see if there is an easy fix.
  • If all else fails, rather than spending days or weeks wasting your time searching for a solution, sometimes the best thing to do is search for a different UNIX-based distro. At least until you become more experienced, or a new update comes to Fedora with better drivers.
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  • I started off with Kubuntu 12.04 and I was happy with it :) When I got my laptop I installed it on my laptop and the only problems I had was some Intel graphic driver issues which weren't to severe and wireless and wired network both not working. So I ended up compiling the drivers for the network my self which fixed the problem for me. Though my wireless network wasn't all to trust worthy, so I stepped over to Fedora. The only driver I know of that's responsible for the touchpad is xorg-x11-drv-synaptics, which I tried reinstalling. Though it ended up doing nothing.
    – Jasper Creyf
    Commented Apr 6, 2014 at 4:36
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It's not a bug, it's a feature. It allows you to use the bottom half of the touchpad as mouse buttons without affecting the mouse pointer's position. See https://discussions.apple.com/message/9109261#9109261#9109261 for an Apple side of the story.

But I agree with you I find myself moving over the touch pad without the pointer moving. It would be nice if this feature was configurable. For instance by setting the low water mark where to start the button area.

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