Nomad the good,bad and pretty

1

Tested NomadBSD1.4RC1 on my DELL D430 laptop aka portable heater.
Specs:
2 GiB RAM
2 Core Intel
Broadcom wifi

Experience compared to Linux distros [OpenSuse/Ubuntu/Manjaro - LXQt]

Good:

  • Screen resolution autodetected with no issues
  • Dreaded Broadcom wifi running out of the box
    [OpenSUE - total fail on proprietary driver, Ubuntu - manual install from online repos, Manjaro - offline re-install+restart]
  • Very fast and stable

Bad:

  • Touchpad GUI config does not have an option to set ‘tap’ nor ‘scroll’
    This solution renders button void and still no scroll:
    ALPS Touchpad Configuration - #2 by Sterling101

  • wifi systray widget does not let you correct password when you mistype
    [you have to edit /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf manually]

Pretty:

  • keyboard layout switcher out of the box [nice touch for x-lingual audience]
  • dock out of the box
    0daaea0d1bcacab7c497114391ed58964e19657e84c3c465d26e8169bee02dcd
1 Like
2

Hi @Daniel_Bowman,

thank you for the feedback :slight_smile:

Did you choose the touchpad device or System mouse in the Device combo box?

3

Hi thanks for reply,
My bad…Touchpad is not in the Device combo box.
My options are only between

  • System mouse
  • Glide point
    Neither work [scroll nor tap].
    Though Touchpad otherwise works fine - cursor movement is fine [probably simulating mouse].
    I checked /boot/loader.conf for
    hw.psm.synaptics_support="1" and it was there…only without “” [does not work either way]
4

Do you have the iichid kernel module loaded? Check with

kldstat | grep -q -w 'iichid\.ko'
5

Nothing there. I checked the whole list un-grepped manually and it is not there.
It is strange. Touchpad works very well otherwise. Maybe it is recognized as ps2 mouse with touchpad features handled by HW behind the scenes.

I did some searching on LINUX and it identifies as

xinput list-props 11

AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Touchpad

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

Pins it to:
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input1

lspci

is probably this:
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)

No mention of TouchPad anywhere [lspci or lsusb].
My take is: TouchPad is hidden in layers of Intel wizardry and BSD recognizes it simply as Mouse coupled with DualPoint STICK.

6

Add the following lines to /boot/loader.conf:

ig4_load="YES"
iicbus_load="YES"
iichid_load="YES"

Reboot, and see if it helps.

7

kldstat now lists all 3 suggested .ko.
But no change.

xinput list

still lists only System mouse [id-7] and Glide Point [id=11]

8

Glide point is the correct device, but I was hoping that you could know enable tapping, or that scrolling works. I’m out of ideas for now, but it seems, this a not a problem we can solve. It’s a problem with libinput and/or the underlying driver layer. This is, unfortunately, out of our scope.

9

Glide point is probably the Stick - joystick-like one-finger operated rubberized thingy in the middle of the keyboard.

People are reporting problems with ALPS Touchpad on FreeBSD forums…with no solutions.
I would guess it is driver/recognition issue as well.
No problem.
I prefer WiFi working out of the box to Touchapd having “only” 80% capability.
Thanks for your time.

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