Lenovo G555 Alps touchpad performs about 80 percent better in Fedora 15 daily build than it does in Windows 7 or most current Linux distros

I am testing Fedora 15's pre-alpha system via the Feb. 17, 2011 nightly build, and for the first time in any operating system — Windows 7 included — I can use the touchpad with tap-to-click without the cursor jumping wildly in my window, randomly selecting and then causing me to unwillingly delete text.

Unlike in Windows 7, Lenovo G555 users in most Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora, have been able to turn off the "tap to click" function and have a system that is not totally frustrating to use without manually turning off the touchpad entirely (with Fn-F8, a Lenovo "feature") and using a USB mouse.

Thus far, I don't think Lenovo has shipped a new Windows 7 driver for the Lenovo G555 that both corrects the "jumpy" cursor problem when the touchpad is turned on as well as allow the user to turn off tap-to-click (again, like they can do in most Linux systems).

But here I am in a nightly build of Fedora 15, which will be released in May 2011, and I decided to invoke tap-to-click and see how the touchpad responds.

Almost flawless.

To set up the touchpad for tap-to-click, I went to System - System Setings in the GNOME menu. Then I clicked Mouse and Touchpad. Then I clicked the Touchpad tab and checked the boxes that said Disable touchpad while typing and Enable mouse clicks with touchpad. Then I closed the window (which I could do by tapping on my touchpad after navigating to the "x").

So why do I say "almost flawless"? When typing in a web form or in gedit as I'm doing now, I had no "jumpy cursor" problems. But when I had the mouse/touchpad settings window open for reference when writing this entry, I had a little jumpy/select-y thing happen when I went back to the gedit text editor that was exaclty like what seems to happen all the time in Windows 7 or "current" Linux distributions.

It only happened with that settings window open, and once I closed it, there were no jumpy cursor issues when running the touchpad with tap-to-click.

And remember, unlike in Windows 7, most Linux distributions today allow you to turn off tap-to-click and use your touchpad without this annoying bug (and without turning off the touchpad completely with Fn-F8).

Why is the touchpad better in this pre-alpha build of Fedora 15? It could be the 2.6.38 Linux kernel, it could be any number of packages, from the touchpad drivers to GNOME 2.91, to Xorg, or something completely different.

I'm not yet prepared to say it's one thing or another. I'm running the 2.6.37 Linux kernel in Debian Squeeze right now. I get those kernels from Liquorix, and eventually there will be newer kernels than 2.6.32 in Debian Sid and Wheezy (the new Testing branch now that Squeeze is stable) as well as in Squeeze Backports, so I'll be keeping up with newer kernels against a Stable Debian base one way or other.

But what I can say is that the function of the Alps touchpad in the Lenovo G555 laptop is much improved in what Fedora is slated to release as its next distribution on May 10, 2011.

The more I test what will become Fedora 15, the more I deem the improvement in Alps touchpad function in the Lenovo G555 as "80 percent improvement," rather that "it totally works," and I'm hopeful that in the Linux environment there are ways to further tweak the touchpad configuration in the text files that should make it work perfectly right now. Unfortunately, I don't know the configuration magic that would/could/should make that happen. If any of you know how to do it, I'd love for you to let me and the rest of the Lenovo G555-using world in on it.

Note on sound for Lenovo G555 users: Sound-muting issues when plugging in headphones — which are solved out of the box in Debian Squeeze with the 2.6.37 Liquorix kernel and can be solved with a configuration change in recent Ubuntu releases — are present in this Fedora 15 nightly build. The only way to test if the configuration change works for sound muting with the headphone jack is to make the change and reboot, which I can't do in the live environment.

Final thought on the Lenovo G555 touchpad: This is still a crappy piece of hardware that Lenovo should not be using in any laptop, no matter how inexpensive. I know everybody says Synaptics touchpads are better, and while I agree with that sentiment, I have had more than a couple of cheap laptops with Alps touchpads, and while one of the touchpads quit working after years of use, none have had the jumpy issues that this particular Alps touchpad has in the Lenovo G555.

Since I almost never use the touchpad and prefer to use a USB mouse, the problem doesn't affect me as much as it affects others, but a crappy touchpad can really take away from the "user experience," as it were.