My friend just bought a Dell XPS M1530 and wanted to put Linux on it, and, of course, I felt obligated to help. The installer worked fine, but after booting into Linux for the first time, we ran into a problem.
The machine was running BIOS revision A09 (you can see what revision your machine is running when you boot the computer) and the first problem we had to solve was getting the touchpad to work. In order to this, we had to do a couple of things.
First, we had to add an option when we booted the kernel. To do this, boot into Ubuntu (you don’t need to login) and at the login screen press Control + Alt + F1. This will give you a text-based shell to your system. Login using the username and password you set during the installation.
Next, enter:
sudo pico /boot/grub/menu.lst
Once you get the file open, scroll down until you see the end of all the comments. You should then see a GRUB menu item that looks something like this:
title Ubuntu 8.04
root (hd2,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=d7e165c2-5123-4034-b714-e9066d724f58 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
At the end of the kernel line, add:
i8042.nomux=1
So that, in the end, the entire kernel line looks like this:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=d7e165c2-5123-4034-b714-e9066d724f58 ro quiet splash i8042.nomux=1
Close pico by pressing control + X. Make sure to save the file to the same name it was before. If you get a permission denied error, you forgot to run the command with sudo.
Next, reboot the computer by typing:
sudo shutdown -r now
Once your computer is rebooted, you should be able to use your touchpad. You will have to do this every time you install a new kernel.
On my friend’s Dell, there were still problems. If you opened up mouse preferences, (System -> Preferences -> Mouse) there was no “Touchpad” tab like there is on most computer. In order to fix this, open up your xorg.conf file by opening a new terminal and typing:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Once the gedit window opens, scroll down until you see an InputDevice with a Identifier of “Configured mouse.” Delete this section. Chances are, you installed Ubuntu with a USB mouse plugged in, so the laptop treated that mouse as your default. Save your file and reboot.
