I had replaced my Linux Ubuntu Operating system with the Linux Mint OS a few months back and I am really happy with the performance. But recently a unique problem has come up, the touchpad freeze randomly and I am left with no choice but to reboot the system.

I am using the Tata Photon USB Broadband connection. After activating the connection, when I start the Firefox browser, after sometime the touchpad becomes unresponsive and stops working, the left key, right key, well nothing works. The only option to get it working is to reboot, but then again you never know when the touchpad will stop working.

There is a way to fix this touchpad issue on Linux Mint or any other Linux distribution. One option is to use an external USB mouse and disable the touchpad completely. But if you insist on using the touchpad try out these two options to fix the issue.

  1. Try disabling the tap function on the touchpad. This worked for me but it can get really annoying as you need to press the left click dedicated button on the touchpad. Go to System Tools -> System Setting and then click Mouse and Touch pad there you can disable the tap click feature.
  2. The second option also worked for me with touchpad tap enabled. Just download and install the gpointing-devices-settings program and that should fix the touchpad problems.
  3. You can also try unchecking “disable touchpad when typing and also disable scrolling.

How to install gpointing-devices-settings on Linux Mint OS

  • On Linux Mint OS Click menu -> other -> software manager and search for gpointing-devices-settings.
  • When found mark and install it.
  • You can setup the gpointing-devices-settings from menu -> other -> pointing devices.
linux mint pointing devices
linux mint pointing devices
Install Gpointing device settings to fix touchpad stop working issues in Linux
Gpointing device settings

By Rajeev Rana

Founder and Chief Editor - gogi.in