Cursor jumps at the end of trackpoint movement with libinput 1.9+ on thinkpads on Bionic

[Shuhao]

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/issues/34

---

After installing bionic on two thinkpads (x131e, x230), I've noticed that once you stop motion on the trackpoint (and possibly apply a miniscule amount of pressure on it after stopping), the cursor will jump in the direction of the previous motion by a small amount. This makes the computer incredibly difficult to use as you can't accurately target things. Furthermore, the speed of the cursor has increased substantially.

I have a slow motion video captured on an iPhone that demonstrates this behaviour but I can't upload it at this moment. If someone wants to see it, I might be able to post it later.

I've also narrowed down the problem to libinput. I bisected the different releases via the debian sources (with the packages built from them) and narrowed it to some changes between 1.8 and 1.9. This makes sense as I previously didn't notice this behaviour on Artful, which is on libinput 1.8. This issue affects all distros as well, given that it's a libinput issue.

I also tested the latest libinput, 1.10.7, and it does NOT resolve this issue.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: libinput-bin 1.10.4-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-20.21-generic 4.15.17
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
BootLog: Error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/log/boot.log'
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
CompositorRunning: None
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Thu May 24 20:07:52 2018
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: bionic
DistroVariant: ubuntu
DkmsStatus:
 acpi_call, 1.2.0, 4.15.0-15-generic, x86_64: installed
 acpi_call, 1.2.0, 4.15.0-20-generic, x86_64: installed
 acpi_call, 1.2.0, 4.15.0-22-generic, x86_64: installed
GraphicsCard:
 Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Lenovo 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [17aa:21fe]
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-04-16 (38 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Beta amd64 (20180404)
MachineType: LENOVO 33691J6
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_CA:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-4.15.0-20-generic root=UUID=e504e156-d82a-4ff6-8582-ced4b5d9fd8c ro rootflags=subvol=@ quiet splash vt.handoff=1
SourcePackage: libinput
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 12/18/2013
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: G8ET96WW (2.56 )
dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
dmi.board.name: 33691J6
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: 0B98401 PRO
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrG8ET96WW(2.56):bd12/18/2013:svnLENOVO:pn33691J6:pvrThinkPadX131e:rvnLENOVO:rn33691J6:rvr0B98401PRO:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
dmi.product.family: ThinkPad X131e
dmi.product.name: 33691J6
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad X131e
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO
version.compiz: compiz N/A
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.91-2
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 18.0.0~rc5-1ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 18.0.0~rc5-1ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.19.6-1ubuntu4
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev N/A
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:18.0.1-1
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.917+git20171229-1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.15-2

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please report the problem to the libinput developers here:
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=wayland&component=libinput

and then let us know the URL of the new bug.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

I have an X61, a T470s and a thinkpad usb keyboard and can't repro that jumping issue, but the acceleration speed is indeed much different on the latter two. There are separate bugs for that I guess, and modifying the mouse accel slider does help somewhat.

[Håvard H. Garnes (hhgarnes)]

There is a bugreport about this in wayland:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106448
But it doesn't seem to have been filed by the same author as this bug.

This bug is also affecting me in the same way as for the original author. The trackpoint behaves very erratically.

[Shuhao (shuhao)]

Note that I'm not using Wayland. The erratic behaviour is present under X as well.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

That's OK. The upstream bug tracker is just poorly designed and libinput bugs (that affect X too) are filed under Product=Wayland :(

[Shuhao (shuhao)]

Thanks for confirming the bug. In the meanwhile, for anyone encountering this problem, you can work around it by installing libinput10 and libinput-bin from artful.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Moved to:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/issues/22

[Shuhao (shuhao)]

Moved to: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/issues/34

[Andre Brait (andrebrait)]

This would be fixed by upgrading to libinpu 1.11. Peter Hutteter put in some great effort into analyzing touchpad data from Windows and MacOS, as well as the old Synaptics driver, and I must say, after upgrading from 1
10.5 to 1.11 in Fedora, it's just on par with MacOS and Windows now.

[Andre Brait (andrebrait)]

Actually, I confused trackpoints with trackpads. Indeed, there's no fix for trackpoints yet.