Dragging with touchpad on MacBook does not work

[Bjoern Guenzel]

I have booted the Jaunty LiveCD on my MacBook rev 5.1. While moving the mousepointer with the touchpad works, and (left-) clicking works, they can't be used in combination (press touchpad down with one finger, move pointer around with other fingers). This means drag and drop can't be used, windows can't be moved, and scrollbars in windows can't be moved.

Sorry I have not yet tried to go through all the manual configuration options in the MacBook guide. I tried to install some of the special packages mentioned there, but they were not being found. I assume it only works with an installation, not with the LiveCD.

[David Stansby (dstansby-deactivatedaccount)]

Have you tried installing ubuntu on to your mac, and seeing if that works?

[Bjoern Guenzel (h-launchpad-blinker-net)]

Not yet, but I thought a bug in the LiveCD was worth reporting, too. Would be a shame if some Mac users failed to switch because of flaws in the LiveCD.

[Vince (v-brz)]

I have the exact same issue on Karmic Beta (for both liveCD and installed version)

[Yesudeep J Mangalapilly (yesudeep)]

I'm facing the same problem with my MacBook Pro 5.2 and the release version of
Ubuntu (Karmic) 9.10. Haven't yet found a solution to this problem.
The only workaround I have right now is to use a wireless mouse!

Cheers,
Yesudeep.

[Yesudeep J Mangalapilly (yesudeep)]

Nevermind. I figured out a way to click and drag.

Enable tap-click.
Tap click with one finger and swipe/drag with another.

Also happened to notice that clicking with a finger and then dragging with four fingers seems to
drag things around although not very comfortably.

Cheers.

[glass.dimly (jmjohn)]

I can't make any of the tips from #5 work. This is a serious bug, that click-drag doesn't work well on the MacBook Pro. How is one to use Gnome if click and drag doesn't work? It is necessary to click and drag all the time.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.
Is this bug reproducible with the latest Lucid packages ?
Thanks in advance.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

 Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage .

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

We'd like to figure out what's causing this bug for you, but we haven't heard back from you in a while. Could you please provide the requested information? Thanks!

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Richard Warburton (richard-warburton-it)]

Bug still exists on 10.10 on MacBook 5.1, which makes it somewhat unusable. I don't think it is a driver bug, or actually a bug, just a feature omission. A feature is needed whereby, if the touchpad's mouse button is down, stationary touches (aka the thumb pressing the button) are ignored allowing the other finger to move the mouse selecting text etc. Pointer Devices, or xserver-xorg-input-synaptics?

Hope that helps.

[thetravellor (cooperstephenjames)]

Has any effort been made to resolve this?

I have just installed 10.04.02 on a Macbook Pro 15 5,1.

It is most frustrating to have to use an external mouse to do such a simple thing as pick up a window by its title bar and move it.

When will this be resolved, its been like this for 2 years it seems.

[Nico Schlömer (nschloe)]

I have the same issue on a Macbook 8,1 with Ubuntu 11.10.

[Nico Schlömer (nschloe)]

Okay, I got dragging figured out:
It only requires one finger. Mouse the cursor over the bar above a window, click (don't release), and without taking your finger off of the touchpad, move around.

[Michael Mattax (7joyae9)]

This bug is still present in Ubuntu 11.10 on a Macbook 5,4. I can't select text or drag items with the cursor.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Bjoern Guenzel, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p xserver-xorg-input-synaptics REPLACE-WITH-BUG-NUMBER

Please note, given that the information from the prior release is already available, doing this on a release prior to the development one would not be helpful.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]