MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support

[jonny]

Has anyone figured out the horrible scrolling experience? Scrolling inside of any application is miserable for me... I know I'm pretty used to the "smooth" scrolling on the mac now, but I've never had such a bad scrolling experience as I have had with the Macbook Air running Ubuntu 11.10. I'm guessing there is some way to tweak this to make it a bit more bearable.

It works perfectly for me using the default driver (I've never bothered with mtrack) but I found that it was essential to adjust the trackpad's sensitivity to get a really good experience. Scrolling now works perfectly, with all the speed and inertia effects that OS X has. The only problem I've found is that Evince (the pdf viewer in Ubuntu) doesn't play nicely with trackpad scrolling unless you position the mouse over the scroll bar on the right of the screen.

You need to use the command-line synclient program to adjust the trackpad. Used with no arguments, it lists all of the trackpad's settings, and you can set any of these with 'synclient <setting>=<value>'. The ones that keep me sane are:

synclient fingerhigh=50
synclient fingerlow=40

Play around with those values, as I like a fairly sensitive touchpad so you might want to go a little higher. Fingerhigh is the level of pressure needed for a touch to be recognised, and fingerlow is the level of pressure needed for a touch to continue to be recognised once it's been initially identified. A larger gap between the two therefore reduces the risk of touches being derecognised halfway through a gesture.

Once you've found values that you like, you can add a section to your xorg.conf file to make the changes system-wide and permanent. Mine looks like this:

Section "InputClass"
       Identifier "touchpad catchall"
       Driver "synaptics"
       MatchIsTouchpad "on"
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
      Option "FingerLow" "40"
      Option "FingerHigh" "50"
EndSection

I think that someone's written a GUI to allow these settings to be changed, but I've never bothered to look for it.

[deanproxy]

It works perfectly for me using the default driver (I've never bothered with mtrack) but I found that it was essential to adjust the trackpad's sensitivity to get a really good experience. Scrolling now works perfectly, with all the speed and inertia effects that OS X has. The only problem I've found is that Evince (the pdf viewer in Ubuntu) doesn't play nicely with trackpad scrolling unless you position the mouse over the scroll bar on the right of the screen.

You need to use the command-line synclient program to adjust the trackpad. Used with no arguments, it lists all of the trackpad's settings, and you can set any of these with 'synclient <setting>=<value>'. The ones that keep me sane are:

synclient fingerhigh=50
synclient fingerlow=40

Play around with those values, as I like a fairly sensitive touchpad so you might want to go a little higher. Fingerhigh is the level of pressure needed for a touch to be recognised, and fingerlow is the level of pressure needed for a touch to continue to be recognised once it's been initially identified. A larger gap between the two therefore reduces the risk of touches being derecognised halfway through a gesture.

Once you've found values that you like, you can add a section to your xorg.conf file to make the changes system-wide and permanent. Mine looks like this:

Section "InputClass"
       Identifier "touchpad catchall"
       Driver "synaptics"
       MatchIsTouchpad "on"
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
      Option "FingerLow" "40"
      Option "FingerHigh" "50"
EndSection

I think that someone's written a GUI to allow these settings to be changed, but I've never bothered to look for it.

You, sir, are awesome! This totally makes scrolling much more like it was on OSX. Thank you so much.

Now, do you know how to get click-drag working? As in, I want to click with my thumb, and drag with another finger. This makes it easier to drag something across the entire screen. If there is some way to fix this, all of my problems with Ubuntu on the Air will be completely resolved.

[jebus_beler]

You, sir, are awesome! This totally makes scrolling much more like it was on OSX. Thank you so much.

Now, do you know how to get click-drag working? As in, I want to click with my thumb, and drag with another finger. This makes it easier to drag something across the entire screen. If there is some way to fix this, all of my problems with Ubuntu on the Air will be completely resolved.

I don't think this works with the synaptic driver since click drag relies on multitouch so I might be wrong. This works fine with the mtrack driver.

Curious, does anyone have some optimal setting for mtrack? I've been using the default one from the post-install script and they're ok but some tweaking might be nice (in particular tap and drag on titlebars doesn't work because its picked up as a double-click and ends up maximizing the window).

[deanproxy]

I don't think this works with the synaptic driver since click drag relies on multitouch so I might be wrong. This works fine with the mtrack driver.

Curious, does anyone have some optimal setting for mtrack? I've been using the default one from the post-install script and they're ok but some tweaking might be nice (in particular tap and drag on titlebars doesn't work because its picked up as a double-click and ends up maximizing the window).

Synaptic appears to work with multitouch for me... maybe just not gestures.

I tried Mtrack but it still wasn't a good experience. I couldnt rest my thumb on the trackpad and still track with my finger. I do this when I need to get a quick click in while tracking. Like when I'm about to resize a window or I'm clicking quickly through Nautilus file folders. It stops tracking when I do this. maybe I need to adjust the settings more. However, the scrolling experience with Mtrack was terrible. Much better with synaptic...

[deanproxy]

Synaptic appears to work with multitouch for me... maybe just not gestures.

I tried Mtrack but it still wasn't a good experience. I couldnt rest my thumb on the trackpad and still track with my finger. I do this when I need to get a quick click in while tracking. Like when I'm about to resize a window or I'm clicking quickly through Nautilus file folders. It stops tracking when I do this. maybe I need to adjust the settings more. However, the scrolling experience with Mtrack was terrible. Much better with synaptic...

I messed with the thumbsize setting in mtrack and got it to ignore my thumb successfully.

Now if mtrack could fix its scrolling to be as smooth as synaptics...

[blackjay0419]

I messed with the thumbsize setting in mtrack and got it to ignore my thumb successfully.

Now if mtrack could fix its scrolling to be as smooth as synaptics...

to deanproxy:

would you like to share your setting of mtrack in xong.conf ?
I have tried the mtrack, click and drag did work, but overall experience is much worse than synaptic drivers.
maybe the forum could find a good setting for Macbook air 4.

thanks

[blackjay0419]

After using ubuntu 12.04 (gnome-shell) for few hours, I have found the most annoying thing is the touchpad. An example is when I type with keyboard, it is nearly unavoidable to accidentally trigger the one-click tap. It ends up I have to disable touchpad whenever I want to type something.

the problem of accidentally move cursor while typing can be solved by the following command:
synclient PalmDetect=1

additional information can be found at:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics

I think this might be helpful for some people.

[sinzui]

I upgraded to Precise in my MBA 4,1 and had to go back to the Oneiric kernel because of that. Keyboard doing really weird things. Not sure if related to your issue though:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/903655

I am also experiencing problems with the keyboard and touchpad when I first login under precise. The first few key presses work, and then they become unreliable. Touchpad is also broken and I think the trying to use the touchpad makes the keyboard lag worse.

WORKAROUND
The keyboard and touchpad can be made to work by switching away from X then back to it.
1. Press <Control>+<Alt>+<Fn>+F1 to go to console 1.
2. Press <Control>+<Alt>+<Fn>+F7 to return to the desktop.
3. Verify that the keyboard responds immediately to your typing and that the touchpad will scroll.

You may need to do step 1 multiple times because input is not reliably captured.

[wkretzsch]

Hi everybody,
After kernel upgrade to 3.0.0-15 and running post_install_oneiric.sh my external monitor shows a grey screen and the mba screen turns black when I connect the external monitor through the thunderbolt port.

I've searched for this problem on google and in this thread, but I haven't found anything, so I assume I've missed a step somewhere. I've installed ubuntu 2D, but I get the same problem there. Any ideas what else I might try?

[wkretzsch]

I tried booting the mba with the external monitor attached into unity 3d and that solved the problem. This was probably my 10th reboot today, so I think the change had something to do with the external monitor being connected from the start.