mactel-support team mailing list archive

[Ricky Campbell <cyberdork33@xxxxxxxxx>]

** Changed in: mactel-support
   Importance: Undecided => High

-- 
Intrepid: Mouse pointer frozen by default on bcm5974-based macbooks
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/263451
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Status in Mactel Support: New
Status in “linux-meta” source package in Ubuntu: New

Bug description:
Binary package hint: linux-image

Tested on Intrepid Daily Live i386 CD, 31AUG2008:

Starting up the CD on a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Penryn, both of which use the bcm5974 trackpad driver, the mouse pointer is initially frozen. The reason is that the bcm5974 driver only mimics a synaptics touchpad, not a mouse. After configuring the synaptics driver everything is fine, but the default behavior is simply not going to work well for first time users.

The suggested remedy is to add a second, default, configuration to the bcm5974 driver, where it works as a multi-button mouse, using multi-finger options. This will give several benefits:

* The default Xorg configuration will pick up the mouse input interface, resulting in a functional mouse pointer.

* Multi-scroll will work without the need to configure the synaptics driver.

* Multi-finger button emulation, which currently only exists in the mactel version of the synaptics driver, will work out-of-the-box.

Basically, unless multi-finger-tapping is wanted, no reconfiguration of Xorg or bcm5974 will be necessary. A patch will be submitted shortly.