Recently, I have been able to make the ALPS GlidePoint PS/2 Touchpad of my Packard Bell laptop to work properly under Linux and X.org X11R6 Server, including edge scrolling and tap-to-release drag lock.

The support for ALPS GlidePoint Touchpads seems a relatively recent addition, both to Linux kernels and X.org X11 servers. The first thing to check for is whether the kernel has properly detected the touchpad. The following lines should appear in the kernel message ring:

# dmesg
…
ALPS Touchpad (Glidepoint) detected
Enabling hardware tapping
input: AlpsPS/2 ALPS TouchPad on isa0060/serio1
…

In second place, make sure the synaptics X.org driver has been installed. For Fedora Core systems, this usually means installing synaptics-0.13.5-5 or a newer version:

# yum install synaptics

will usually install the synaptics RPM package which contains the X.org synaptics driver:

# rpm -qil synaptics
…
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input/synaptics_drv.o
…

Once the required pieces are all set up, the X.org configuration file must be changed in order to use the new synaptics input driver. This can be easily achieved by replacing the “InputDevice” section in “/etc/X11/xorg.conf” file for the mouse with the following:

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier "Mouse0"
   Driver     "synaptics"
   Option     "Protocol"             "auto-dev"
   Option     "Device"               "/dev/input/mice"
   Option     "ZAxisMapping"         "4 5"
   Option     "Emulate3Buttons"      "yes"
   Option     "LeftEdge"             "120"
   Option     "RightEdge"            "830"
   Option     "TopEdge"              "120"
   Option     "BottomEdge"           "650"
   Option     "FingerLow"            "14"
   Option     "FingerHigh"           "15"
   Option     "MaxTapTime"           "180"
   Option     "MaxTapMove"           "110"
   Option     "EmulateMidButtonTime" "75"
   Option     "VertScrollDelta"      "20"
   Option     "HorizScrollDelta"     "20"
   Option     "MinSpeed"             "0.2"
   Option     "MaxSpeed"             "0.5"
   Option     "AccelFactor"          "0.01"
   Option     "EdgeMotionMinSpeed"   "15"
   Option     "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed"   "15"
   Option     "UpDownScrolling"      "1"
   Option     "CircularScrolling"    "1"
   Option     "CircScrollDelta"      "0.1"
   Option     "CircScrollTrigger"    "2"
   Option     "LockedDrags"          "1"
   Option     "SHMConfig"            "on"
EndSection

Finally, the section “Module” must be modified to manually load the “synaptics” input driver provided by the synaptics RPM package:

Section "Module"
   Load "dbe"
   …
   Load "synaptics"
EndSection