Ubuntu 18.10 Touchpad on Geo Book3 laptop

[diddy1234]

Hi there

I recently purchased a cheap laptop (Geo Book3) and I intended to get rid of windows 10 and replace it with Linux.
I have tried searching the web but the laptop is so new, no one is using this laptop with linux.

After trying several variants of Linux, Ubuntu 18.10 seems to work the best (I suspect because the laptop has been on sale less than 6 months).

There are two issues that I have :-

1. The touchpad only works in Ubuntu 18.10 and not at all in 18.04.
But its the movement that is the problem.
In windows the whole trackpad allows the mouse movement over the whole desktop but in ubuntu I have to swipe several times to get the mouse to move across the whole desktop. No acceleration ?
Also the touch to select has to be turned off as its too sensitive. if i touch the touchpad to move the mouse, it selects as well

2. I cannot install to the onboard system 32GB eMMC. Ubuntu does not see this device, How can I get it to see this ?

Issue number 2 can be worked around with a mountable hard drive or even to a ssd card.

Should I stick with windows for now and wait until an updated version of linux appears ?

The specs of the laptop are :-
Processor - Intel® Celeron® N4000 Processor- Dual-core - 1.10 GHz / 2.60 GHz
RAM 4 GB LPDDR4
Storage 32 GB eMMC
Touchscreen No
Screen size 13.3"
Screen type IPS LCD
Resolution Full HD 1920 x 1080p
WiFi - AC WiFi - 1x1 - Up to 433 Mbps
Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.2
USB USB 3.0 x 2
HDMI x 1

Windows shows the touchpad is a I2c compliant HID device using a standard windows driver
Windows also shows the storage as Common Biwin device


Any answers would be greatly appreciated.

[diddy1234]

For anyone who wants to use Linux on one of these laptops, it can be done but dual booting with windows doesnt work too well.

the best option (gamble on my part) was replacing windows 10 with Ubuntu 18.10 (mouse support works in this version).
in the bios (accessed by the delete key during turning on) I had to turn off trusted computing in order to see the built in 32GB storage and in the southbridge bios settings set Linux instead of windows. then Linux installs.
I did have to play with the touchpad settings (turning off touch to select) as the mouse is too sensitive.
However, In ubuntu I installed Cinnamon desktop and there are extra settings for touchpad sensitivity and acceleration.once these were set, the laptop became very useful.
also the ability to set a max audio output in the amplified region allowed the sound card and built in speakers to be alot louder (this laptop has small downward firing speakers). the extra volume improves this quite a bit.

so the laptop is a terrible windows laptop but a very good linux laptop

[istephen2]

Could you give me a quick guide on how to get Ubuntu working on this laptop?I can't seem to figure it out

[diddy1234]

I found the Ubuntu version 18.04 lts didnt work as it didnt have touchpad drivers (or not configured) so I tried 18.10 and the drivers worked out of the box.

I did have to configure the touchpad though.
I turned off the touch to select feature and then changed the sensitivity and acceleration and now it works fine

[istephen2]

I can get the mouse to move but only if I keep the touch pad clicked in. Any ideas?

[diddy1234]

Sounds like a configuration issue. could you plug in a USB? mouse and see what you get ?
if this works fine, then there is some setting for the trackpad you would need to look into

hope it helps

[urowietu]

Hi I am into python

So I tried to install Ubuntu 19.04 into my new GeoBook1 and it always hanged on a black screen after usb boot. Changed all the boot priority stuff etc. I think the community has just not written drivers yet.

I just accepted it and started to use the windows subsystem for Linux out of MSDOS to learn to do bash scripts and installed my jupyter-notebook through bash terminal. Tomorrow I’m going to a charity shop to buy an old dell with a dvd reader and I am going to dvd-install Ubuntu 19.04 from a dvd off Linux magazine. Live and learn. Someday my geobook will become obsolete enough to have drivers for Ubuntu. It’s all good.

[hoohaw]

FYI, touchpad now works well with the latest 5.0.0.31 kernel on 18.04.3

[uRock]

This thread is old and 18.10 is obsolete.

Thread Closed