Ubuntu 18.4 LTS (Bionic Beaver) has been released with Gnome Desktop (until 16.4 LTS uses Unity) and many cool features making it best version of Ubuntu ever released. Although Ubuntu 18.4 is great it comes with little bugs for touhpad and the problem is that, the touchpad cursor movement is not smooth and jumps around. I am using Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Series laptop that uses Synaptics touchpad. Many other laptops that use Synaptics will also have this touchpad problem, so here is how to fix that.
Ubuntu 18.4 comes with libinput touchpad driver by default and the machine is missing Synaptics touchpad driver.
To trace down the problem check your input devices, run this code in terminal to see the complete list.
xinput list
You can see there your Synaptics touchpad. After that lets check if Synaptics driver has been installed or not. Type below command to get complete list of installed packages.
apt list --installed
Search for xserver-xorg-input-synaptics , this one is missing. I have already installed Synaptics so it is showing in screenshot.
Now it is conformed that synaptics driver is missing, so we should install it. Make sure to check all the 4 source in Software and Updates. See the screenshot below.
Now install Synaptics driver.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
After installing Synaptics reboot or logout now you can feel smooth cursor movement. However the right click is disabled in Ubuntu 18.4 LTS, you can tap with two fingers for right click. If you want to use touchpad right click, install Gnome Tweaks.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweaks
Open Tweaks and in the Keybord and Mouse section, and under Mouse Click Emulation tick Area.
Let me know it this worked for you or not through the comment below.
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