Touchpad issues on Ubuntu 16.10

Solution 1:

I ran in to the same issue after upgrading from 16.04 LTS to 16.10. Reinstalling xserver-xorg-input-all did the trick.

sudo apt install --reinstall xserver-xorg-input-all

My first attempt at reinstalling only xserver-xorg-input-synaptics fixed the issue with the touchpad but broke the keyboard input (on screen keyboard to the rescue).

This was on a Dell XPS 13 9350.

Solution 2:

The easiest way is to install libinput. It is a new user space touchpad driver where there is another palm detection algorithm that is more reliable.

Run in terminal

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-libinput

and reboot.

You will also need to enable tapping manually in /usr/share/X11/xorg-conf.d/90-libinput.conf.