Ubuntu touchpad issues - mouse pointer jumps around

Well, following advice from user WinEunuuchs2Unix, I DID google this. Apparently it is a major bug, has been since Ubuntu 14.04. Anyway, on the bug report page, a guy called Juan Hernandez (juanhm) suggested that installing xserver-xorg-input-libinput worked for him. I wanted to try this, so I typed:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-libinput

and I got a message about broken dependencies, but it also said that the above package depended on xserver-xorg-core, so I tried running:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-core

This installed a whole lot of xserver-xorg packages. I then ran:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-libinput

and this time it worked. Next I rebooted, and tried to run:

sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

but it had already been removed. My touchpad in System Settings is now a very very simple dialogue, BUT the pointer doesn't seem to be jumping around anymore! The only disadvantage I can see is that I can no longer tap the touchpad to click (I have to use the buttons), but I wasn't doing that anyway!

So I do believe this is now working!

The bug report page is here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/1574667

I will update it to confirm that Juan Hernandez's suggestion worked.

I am using Razer Blade Early 2017 and my touchpad is Synaptics TM2438-005 running Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver

I was looking everywhere for a solution and had to dig through the history of synclient, being replaced by libinput and the corresponding cli tool xinput.

But this article solved my problem and more specifically, simply installing libinput-tools

$ sudo apt install libinput-tools

Bionic Beaver is not using Unity as a GUI server but uses Gnome instead, so I am guessing all the dependencies are in there already (xserver-core, libinput etc.)

For anyone who is having issues on Ubuntu 18.04 - this solved my problem and I have a semi-working touchpad now. It still jumps occasionally, but that's once per 10 new touch presses, it used to be every ~millisecond.

In my case @SamuelH solution didn't work since everything was already installed and up to date. What I helped was

• Disable Natural Scroll
• Enable Edge scrolling
• Reduce touch pad speed
• Disable Tap to click

Machine:

Dell E6540

OS:

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Release:    18.04
Codename:   bionic