Have expereinced it now on the two netbooks that we installed NX on. (one HP Pavillion the other a Toshiba if that matters) both used to be win7 but I wiped that junk off the harddrive when installing NX.

Any ideas? It appears a bit everywhere, i.e. in various software, from Open CPN to OpenOffice over Wine...
A bit of a nuisance, particularly for my wife who is a writer...

Happy sailing!

Is this the jittery, nervous mouse, or the typing along and insert what is being typed in the middle of something else 6 lines up mouse?

On the software side of things I'd suggest to install 'gpointing-device-settings' where you can dial down the sensibility/ enable palm detection and so on. What also helps is to install 'mouseemu' where you can turn of your touchpad while typing.

Hardwarewise I found that especially bargain laptops are shipped with junk touchpads that are not well supported under Linux. Most of the time they are quite useable within windows with the manufacturers driver, but with an open source linux driver, I often have no luck to get the settings right. That said, quality laptops with quality touchpads are a charm to operate under Linux, e.g. I never had issues with Synaptics touchpads in Lenovo laptops.

Hope that helped a bit,
Christian

Both the gpointing-device-settings and the mouseemu are good suggestions if someone wants some customisation. Both are small and mouseemu seems to be light on resources....

However, Linux actually supports more stuff than any other OS....and while there are cheap knock-offs; test market bargains; and lipstick on pigs....last year I saw some chineses company was flogging these oddball gps chips for 15 bucks. It was the same chip in a upmarket Lowrance GPS wrapped around $400 worth of plastic and name recognition.

The key seems to be if a device properly identifies in hardware detection so a module can put the necessary parameters in place, particularly if the device has 'unique' features.

Interestingly, there was vendor of a graphics card two years ago. They provided a Linux module as well as Windows drivers. The Linux module provided more functionality, but in an update was crippled to match the ability of the Windows driver. Someone from the open source community then had to resurrect that functionality and incorporate the beneficial modifications made in the 'upgrade'.

Moe, don't get me wrong, especially these days Linux beats the pants out of Windows when it comes to hardware support in general. I was only adressing touchpads in particular where I had some odd ones over the years. Right now I am fighting with a touchpad in an Acer Aspire One V5 which for some reason activates pinch to zoom in zyGrib and OpenCPN. For reasons I cannot understand the manufacturer integrated the buttons under the touchpad itself, so when you click with one finger and move the map with another this sometimes is recognized as pinch-to-zoom and it chages the zoomlevel- superannoying.

Anyways, sorry for highjacking the thread, good luck to the OP with the touchpad,
Christian

No worries. I'm torn between, standardisation and breaking rank to explore new methodologies. On WindowsXP my first gps identified as a mouse...sent the cursor into a uncontrollable frenzy and I couldn't reconfigure unless it was plugged it. It was like swatting a fly while riding a pogo stick. It would just be easier if buried details we not so buried.

I had a similar problem about 4-6 years ago with my first 'budget' laptop. I, personally, am ham handed and use a mouse for greater control and generally turn off the touchpad to avoid #*&@....your suggestion of gpointing-device-setting and mouseemu would have cut down the cursing...but I'd still use a mouse.

Thanks for your input...drop in any time.

I think the pinch-zoom can be fixed if it drives you wild.

This will quieten your jumpy mouse:

In the terminal...Locate:
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "touchpad catchall"

Go down to line #13; MatchIsTouchpad "on"; and hit <Enter>

Paste in the following text that you had previously copied by highlighting and <ctrl><c>....make it pretty, and save and reboot
These can be adjusted...or you could use gpointer-device-settings that zenfunk recommended.

Now this is a wee bit late on an answer, but thanks a lot guys!!!
It helped, quite a bit in fact!

Magnus