Bug 497677

Summary:	Plasma 6 is ignoring input from synaptics and my tendons are in pain
Product:	[I don't know] kde	Reporter:	Salvo "LtWorf" Tomaselli <tiposchi>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Unassigned bugs <unassigned-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	major	CC:	kde, nate
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian unstable
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Salvo "LtWorf" Tomaselli 2024-12-19 11:33:41 UTC

Hello,

Let me start with saying that I don't know if this is the correct component for this bug report. I might be entirely wrong.

I have seen that plasma6 has dropped support for synaptics, which is completely fine by me since I have been using the same xinput script for over a decade now.

However the commit message said that synaptics input was supposed to be working. This is not the case.

My touchpad works completely fine in sddm, and then stops working after logging into plasma6. If I login into lxqt the touchpad keeps working fine.

So I think that some component in plasma6 is actively disabling it. Even using xev inside plasma6 gives no events from the touchpad.

I have been trying to use libinput, but it seems a very complicated process that requires me to send patches to systemd to include support to my hardware (a thinkpad, nothing weird) and to create a specific configuration for libinput. Now, I don't think this is very user friendly, and while I can do it, it's very time consuming so it will take me a very long time before I manage to switch to libinput (assuming my patches would be accepted, which is a big assumption).

Meanwhile the tendons in my forearm have been bothering me, because using libinput requires more strenght and doing it for several hours a day is apparently too much for my tendons.

Anyway since the only mention of synaptics driver explicitly said it would keep working, and just the GUI to configure it was no longer supported, I presume it's a bug that in reality it is getting disabled.

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2024-12-20 18:59:54 UTC

Can you point me to the messaging you found that said it would keep working? If that was indeed the case, it would only ever keep working on X11; Synaptics has no Wayland support so Libinput is the only input driver in town on that platform.

Comment 2 Salvo "LtWorf" Tomaselli 2024-12-20 19:54:51 UTC

Yeah I use Xorg, because of the input and because the fonts look blurry.

Anyway I'm closing this because it was caused by the interaction with my local configuration.

Basically I have a script calling a bunch of xinput settings, and plasma5/6 changed something on what plasma itself is setting, so the end result was that the touchpad was not working, but adapting my own script to run for plasma6 was enough to get it back working with synaptics.