Touchpad scroll and right-click not working on Linux Mint Edge

Hi, I can’t seem to get my touchpad scroll or right-click to work, despite the mouse pointer function working fine on the touchpad. I’m using kernel 5.13 on Linux Mint Edge, with no other obvious issues. I’ve attempted to update the kernel to 5.15 to see if that fixes the issue, but despite it being “installed” in update manager, 5.13 is still the “active” kernel, and there is no “install” button showing when I click 5.15 (just Queue Removal and Remove). However, it seems like the touchpad should be fully supported and functional out of the box with 5.13, so I’m not sure what’s wrong. Obviously, I’m new to Linux.

Kernel: 5.13.0-27-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A Desktop: Cinnamon 5.2.7
wm: muffin dm: LightDM Distro: Linux Mint 20.3 Una base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal

Could you try Kubuntu 22.04 for me, @m0ng00se? I wonder if Mint’s changes are breaking things, considering it’s named “Edge”, instability should be expected.

You think I have to jump straight to changing the OS? That strikes me as a little extreme, especially because I’m otherwise happy with Mint. Edge is supposed to be an officially supported distro for the Framework laptop, if I’m not mistaken (if not the most heavily tested).

I have my differences with Framework’s distro recommendations. Personally, I think they’re horribly wrong for some mentions. There’s a lot of misinformation regarding Linux out there.

I have done additional research, the Linux Mint user guide states the following

The Edge ISO image is not as stable as the other ISOs and may not support as many proprietary drivers. Only use it if you cannot boot or install with the other ISOs.

I’m mostly curious to see if Mint broke stuff, I’ve had the touchpad work perfectly fine in X and Wayland on Ubuntu 22.04 and openSUSE Tumbleweed, so I’m thinking Mint broke something.

Also, Ubuntu has liveUSBs, you don’t have to overwrite any install.

There’s a series of 5.14 kernels available in the Linux Mint repos, called “5.14.0-10XX-oem”. XX went up to 38, I think.

Install Synaptic, search for “5.14” and install ALL “5.14.0-1038-oem” (“signed” or “unsigned”) packages. There will be 3 or 4. I’m away from my Framework at the moment but will list the exact packages later.

5.15.0-10XX-oem has just come out and works well.

Properly installed, you shouldn’t have to do anything, but you can switch between kernels at boot by pressing and holding Shift right after the Framework logo clears and selecting “Advanced options for Linux Mint”.

All this might not address your issue though, it should just work.

@Fraoch After following your instructions in Synaptic, I’ve found way more than 4 packages that have 5.14-1038-oem. About 12 packages have all those parts. Should I install the ones the ones that start with “modules,” “Objects,” “tools,” etc?

I also see that I have two broken processes: linux-modules-extra-5.4.0-120-generic & linux-image-generic - not sure if that has anything to do with my problem (probably not).

Whoops, sorry, forgot to check.

You should install:

linux-headers-5.14.0-1038-oem
linux-image-5.14.0-1038-oem
linux-modules-5.14.0-1038-oem
linux-oem-5.14-headers-5.14.0-1038
linux-oem-5.14-tools-5.14.0-1038
linux-tools-5.14.0-1038-oem

Don’t bother with the “buildinfo”, “modules-nvidia”, “objects-nvidia” and “signatures-nvidia” packages.

There are now 5.15 images as well that work:

linux-headers-5.15.0-33-generic
linux-hwe-5.15-headers-5.15.0-33
linux-hwe-5.15-tools-5.15.0-33
linux-hwe-5.15-tools-common
linux-image-5.15.0-33-generic
linux-modules-5.15-33-generic
linux-modules-extra-5.15.0-33-generic
linux-tools-5.15.0-33-generic

From the way these are named, I’m guessing this is in preparation for Linux Mint 21 and that they’ll be using 5.15.0 for LM 21.

Don’t worry about anything relating to kernel 5.4, you can’t use it anyway. Although sometimes if you have broken packages it won’t let you update at all. If you see any errors on updating, you’ll have to resolve those broken packages first.