I recently installed Zorin Pro on a Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop. Overall it works great but if I leave the laptop alone for example overnight, sometimes when I come back to it I hear the fan going crazy and the trackpad has stopped working. Oddly enough as I was typing this, even though I had just rebooted, the trackpad stopped working and I had to reboot to fix it.
Any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks!
Do you have any more specific specs to the machine? I know you have a dell inspiron 5000, but just from looking appears there's a lot of models and configurations over the years for that haha.
You can get more info in the settings -> about area, or if you wanted to use the terminal and post the output here of:
inxi -b
That would help in getting a quick idea of what hardware we're talking about.
Also, In that about section, if the window system says Wayland, you could try switching over to X11 at the login screen (bottom right corner) and see if that has the same issue.
As an Addition to that: You have to install inxi first. It doesn't come preinstalled. To install it, type in the Terminal:
sudo apt install inxi
Did You take a Look in the ''Additional Drivers'' Tab in Software & Updates if there are any Drivers offered? And have You updated Your System after the Installation?
Thanks for the suggestion! Here's the inxi -b output:
System:
Host: mwoodward-Inspiron-5567 Kernel: 6.8.0-51-generic x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: GNOME 43.9 Distro: Zorin OS 17.2
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 5567 v: N/A
serial:
Mobo: Dell model: 04M49V v: A00 serial: UEFI: Dell
v: 1.5.0 date: 06/11/2021
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 24.5 Wh (100.0%) condition: 24.5/42.0 Wh (58.3%)
CPU:
Info: dual core Intel Core i7-7500U [MT MCP] speed (MHz): avg: 1025
min/max: 400/3500
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 620 driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: Microdia Integrated_Webcam_HD type: USB driver: uvcvideo
Display: wayland server: X.Org v: 1.22.1.1 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.1
compositor: gnome-shell driver: gpu: i915 resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2)
v: 4.6 Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.3
Network:
Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
driver: ath10k_pci
Device-2: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet driver: r8169
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 23.68 GiB (5.1%)
Info:
Processes: 275 Uptime: 2m Memory: 7.53 GiB used: 2.33 GiB (31.0%)
Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.13
Since that says wayland I'll give X11 a shot and see how that goes. Thanks!
Yep, system fully updated and when I go to Additional Drivers it says "No additional drivers available."
Did you try x11 session ?
Yep, so far so good on x11! Will see how it is after sitting overnight. This week it worked for several days and suddenly the trackpad stopped working, and then today it stopped working 2-3 times within an hour.
I'll report back!
When you raise or minimize windows, do you see a floating animation glitch in the upper left corner (while using X11)?
Sometime over the weekend the behavior returned -- came into my office and heard the fan raging and the trackpad wasn't working.
Did You checked in the System Monitor if there is a Proccess who maybe uses a lot of Ressources?
If you mean a "hiccup" of sorts, i.e., when the window maximizes it hits its size and then shifts up and to the left a bit after it's done maximizing, then yes I see that. If that isn't what you mean let me know and I'll mess with it and see what else I see.
Thanks -- I'll have to figure out how to check the monitor when the trackpad doesn't work. This is just a base install and Zorin Pro sitting there with no apps running but could be a background process run amok I suppose. I'll see what I can figure out.
That is what I mean, yes. OK. I really wish the Zorin Group didn't release Zorin 17 knowing that X11 was in that kind of state. (But X11 works perfectly in 16.3.)
It initially made a bad impression on me, but I've accepted that Wayland is the future, more or less, and Wayland works on my PC, so OK. It is what it is. But still. X11 will have a place for years to come. I dunno. Anyway, thanks for replying.
Interesting, thanks for the additional details. Given that I have the same problem between Wayland and X11 I'll have to dig deeper.
Trying a net search on this issue, it looks like you are not alone, across distros and across desktop protocols.
https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/linux-general/inspiron-14-5410-erratic-touchpad-on-ubuntu-2204/647fa179f4ccf8a8de6b8072
To me, this makes sense. The touchpad would be a device hardware / kernel / drivers issue; nothing to do with which D.E. or D.P. you are using.
I found similar threads on Ubuntu Forums, all with no answers.
Possibilities include: More than one touchpad driver in use (Check xinput list), driver fault or driver not initializing upon wake.
Thanks for that! For kicks I installed Mint and sure enough, same deal. As I messed with this more I noticed that the WiFi and the trackpad both fail at the same time when I have an issue, though on Mint the fan doesn't go crazy when the problem occurs (weird).
I did disable power saving on PCI devices by modifying /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pci=noaer"
I'm probably jinxing it by saying this but so far so good after 2 days. We'll see if it holds.
Thanks again for the info!