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I recently upgraded my Dell Precision M90 Laptop to Ubuntu Karmic Koala. I’m running it standalone, no Windows anywhere. When I upgraded using ?apt-get upgrade? my touchpad didn?t work. Nothing. The touchpad was completely disabled. I assume that this is a problem on M70s, etc.

Found a fix after searching for two days; ? in case you’re having the same problem, here it is.

Open a terminal (if you don’t have a mouse hooked up, use Alt+F2). then “su” and give the root password (I tried doing this with?sudo and still didn’t have enough permission. I ? “think” you need to be root). At the prompt, type:

echo options psmouse proto=exps > /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.modprobe

At the next prompt, type:

reboot

Your touchpad will come back up after rebooting.

Update 11/12/09

I did an apt-get upgrade just after the release was announced.? ?It killed my NVidia driver and would boot up? ?once in awhile? in recovery mode.? ?I finally got frustrated and downloaded and burnt a DVD on my Mac, wiped the disk on my Dell and reinstalled the thing.? ?It?s working fine now; there is no bugginess in the touchpad, etc…

Ubuntu changed a lot of stuff in this release.? ?I find it almost similar to Mac?s move from OS9 to OSX, except that Mac ?warned us? that this was a big move.? ?Ubuntu rushed this release to coincide with Windows 7 and frankly they really dropped the ball on the message, the QA and the overall polish of the product.? ?Thank God I never trusted it enough to leave anything important on the Dell.? ?I?ve got Macs for the critical information over the house that are as stable as the Pyramids.? ?Snow Leopard was a? ?bug fix? release.? ?They?ve come a long way from the pre-Jaguar days, that?s for sure.? ?Ubuntu should take note.

Funny thing is, I actually like using the Ubuntu as much or more than the Mac, but then again, I like writing Python code in front of the TV with a cocktail!

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