Touchpad not recognized on Asus N550JK - TP500L (FocalTech)

Solution 1:

I finally came to this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1372609

It seems FocalTech touchpad needs a specific driver, and that work is in progress to integrate it into the mainline kernel.

currently, there seem to be a ppa to get a dkms driver for this touchpad : http://ppa.launchpad.net/hanipouspilot/focaltech-dkms

After trying this, I can confirm the following procedure works :

1. add ppa

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hanipouspilot/focaltech-dkms
   

2. update the packages database

   sudo apt-get update
   

3. install the dkms driver

   sudo apt-get install focaltech-dkms
   

4. reboot

The touchpad in now recognized. Two finger scrolling works, for example. Also, the zone where the buttons are won't make the cursor move.

Thanks for the community that retro-engeniered this (Asus just replied "no linux support nor technical information" to a request ! Very bad point to them (see the afore-mentioned bug report)).