I’ve had my AMD FW13 for a few days now and love everything about it so far. I’m currently dual-booting Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, both encrypted with BitLocker and LUKS, respectively.
All running smooth as butter.
The official guides have been a great help, especially the Ubuntu one to ensure I have everything working as expected - fingerprint reader, ambient light sensor, the works.
However, there is a small annoyance I’m hoping someone here can answer once and for all…
How do I reduce the trackpad two-finger scroll speed in Ubuntu 22.04?!
I’ve been all over the internet trying different things and nothing is working so far (outside of a Firefox tweak only). Even one suggestion here ([RESPONDED] A Few Irritating bugs on Ubuntu 22.04 - #10 by Owen) which doesn’t work for me as xinput doesn’t list anything with any Scrolling Pixel Distance value.
Everything else I find/try is either outdated, referencing slightly different tools, or flat out does nothing.
It’s not unusable, just very, very sensitive, so scrolling is way too fast. When using Windows the scroll speed is absolutely fine - scrolling across the trackpad relative to screen space. But in Ubuntu I can scroll a whole screen’s worth of page (be it in a browser or system app) with just 2cm of finger movement. This makes pinch-to-zoom in browser windows and maps insane too.
So, is there anyone out there, on the CURRENT version of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, with a FW13 laptop that has had this problem and resolved it at system level - not just for Firefox?
There is not anything that allows you to easily change the speed of two finger scrolling. Especially on Wayland, although I suspect it will make its way to Ubuntu and other distros in the future.
That said, it is “possible” to do this on X11, but it is not userfriendly and I would not be able to support it if it went sideways.
Disable two finger scrolling altogether. I agree, it is sensitive and I generally have it turned off. Activities, search Touchpad.
If scrolling matters and I know it does for some of our customers, a mouse with a wheel may be the best stop-gap at this point. Wish I had better suggestions.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you can boot into X instead of Wayland and try some stuff. But remember, this is not recommended or supported officially. So if it goes sideways, I can’t help.
Log out of Ubuntu, still powered on.
Look to the bottom right, choose the gear, click it, select Xorg. Login.
This not great advice is asking users to install synaptics
( xserver-xorg-input-synaptics) vs libinput, which is old and super dated. May not even work - not recommended on a laptop you are not ready to do a fresh install with if it goes sideways.
Running Fedora 39 on my AMD FW 13 using Wayland. In almost all system apps, including gnome apps, track pad scroll speed is basically normal and works almost as well as Windows. (d*mn you MS with your buttery-smooth precision drivers) Everything but Firefox (and gnome document viewer), is insanely sensitive on every distro that I try out. To work around Firefox’s weird behavior with track pads, I recommend tweaking the following settings to adjust scrolling strength:
about:config → Accept the Risk and Continue → set the following variables:
mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_y (set value to ~25)
mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_x (set value to ~25)
mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_z (set value to ~25)
One down-side to this work-around is that scroll speed becomes very slow when plugging in and using a mouse. To bring it back to normal, you need to revert the variables back to default. Doing this is really annoying. I am currently exploring if there is a way to trigger the assignment of specific Firefox variables based on certain hardware that I use on my machine. So far, no luck.
Thanks for the quick and very detailed response. Just getting official word from yourself has actually put my mind at rest - I wasn’t 100% if this was a wider issue affecting all Ubuntu installs or just something myself and a few unfortunate folk had come across.
I’ve heard many a good thing about yourself across these forums and other locations, such as Reddit, so thanks again from chiming in for me here. I’ll definitely file a bug report with Ubuntu as per your suggestion.
I’ll not be trying any of those other “maybe” workarounds. As you say; it won’t be supported if it goes sideways, so I’m happy to leave well enough alone seeing as this is a known issue Hey, maybe it’ll be resolved come 24.04 LTS.
Thanks @moody_influence, appreciate that. I hear you on this, I do. Wasn’t too many years ago when trackpad functionality was rough on laptops, today, it’s so, so much better. So ideally libinput will continue to improve.
Oh I totally agree. I’ve come from a 5-year-old Lenovo Yoga with Pop_OS and the trackpad is… functional. But the trackpad functionality with Ubuntu on the FW13 is a dream! (ignoring the scrolling speed). The three-finger swipe for the Gnome desktop is so slick.
hi @moody_influence, what was the fix for firefox? I’m having the same trouble but most of my work in Ubuntu is on Firefox so this would solve most of my problems and would be much appreciated!
Hi @fe1i
I changed mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_y to 30 in about:config
The default is 100.
This is fine for when I’m using the touchpad but I have to revert the setting when I’m docked and using my mouse/trackball, as it’s too slow when not using the touchpad.
Keeping my fingers crossed for a global Wayland fix in 24.04 LTS.
Gnome team got a huge donation recently, and are using those added funds to go hard at work on improving accessibility within the desktop environment. Maybe this will include fixes to this input method? We’ll have to wait and see.
I really hope in the next few years the Ubuntu trackpad experience can get to Mac OS level… I am getting carpal tunnel when I use my framework for extended periods due to the scroll and other things, it’s my only downside to the laptop currently.
I’m able to be so accurate and such high tracking speed on Mac that I don’t move my wrist.
