Acer Aspire A315-41 Weird issues with touchpad in Linux

Hi everyone!
I have noticed, that touchpad doesn't work sometimes under Linux.
I have tried switching it to "Basic" mode in BIOS (PS/2 mode I believe), and system won't boot (would hang).
In "Advanced" mode (I2C) it works fine, but sometimes (especially after hybrid sleep) touch pad will not work, and would require either a reboot, or running these commands as root:
sudo modprobe -r i2c_hid
sudo modprobe i2c_hid
I believe this issue is hardware related, because on newer version of BIOS (v1.15) it became so much worse. In older BIOS (v1.09) it works relatively stable.
What can I do about it? Am I the only one who has such weird issues?
Sometimes I get error messages mentioning I2C something-something...

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JackE

What was the factory installed operating system? Jack E/NJ

nicomunet

Windows 10.
I didn't use it much. But I may try using W10 just to test if touchpad fails to work there too.

JackE

Did you install the distro alongside Windows? If not, did you also wipe the hidden recovery partition for the ACER version of Win10? Because it's not the same as the Microsoft generic version. Jack E/NJ

nicomunet

I wiped the drive.
What are the difference between Acer version of Windows and generic?

nicomunet

Speaking of drives, can I install M.2 SSD (SATA) in this laptop? It came with 1 TB HDD only (A315-41 R09T).
It would be pretty convenient way of having 2 OSes, without being afraid that some update would wipe Windows or GRUB bootloader.

JackE

Yes, you can add an m.2 SATA3 card.

The difference between the generic and ACER factory versions are the device drivers and some system files they depend on. But the biggest issue is that Win10 is a moving target with rapid-fire major updates being forced about every 6 months with maintenance support ending after 12-18 months. The factory version on the hidden recovery partition could've at least gotten you back to square one to either rule in or rule out a hardware issue. And the offending updates could've been reversed and blocked until a future update fixed the issue. In situations like this, it's almost always safer to try to install Linux alongside the factory Windows. Unfortunately, the factory version is only available on-line in the US and CA. You might be able to get it by contacting your regional ACER service center here

Alcagen Computación SPA

Calle Ecuador #23 Local 11, Esquina Av. Marina

Gría. Pta de Sol, Viña de Mar

Region V - Valparaiso

Tel: 985131088

alcagen@gmail.com

L a J 10:30 a 13:30 hrs. y de 16:30 a 18:30 hrs. / V 10:30 a 14:00 hrs. Para obtener soporte técnico contáctenos a través de nuestro servicio de chat ya sea desde su equipo de cómputo o desde su celular en: go.acer.com/la-chat

Otherwise, you can download the generic installation using the Microsoft media creation tool http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery

Then download the ACER most recent device drivers for devices that aren't working properly https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/7540?b=1

Jack E/NJ

nicomunet

Well, looks like there are no issues with touchpad in Windows, so it must be Linux bug, as usual

Still don't understand why I had more issues with fresher BIOS version.

JackE

BIOS updates should only be used as a last resort for trying to solve major or disabling problems, NOT annoying system bugs. The risk of irreversible undesirable side effects or worse are much greater than easily reversible device driver updates. As for bugs, a lot depends on how refined the distro is. Some are clearly much better than others and seriously challenging the GUI status quo in PCs. Jack E/NJ

nicomunet

Hm. Interestingly enough, openSUSE Leap 15.1 with pretty old kernel (4.12) works without any issues, except no hibernation.
While openSUSE Tumbleweed won't boot sometimes, and other distributions (Fedora, KDE Neon, Ubuntu) won't even boot without pci=noacpi flag...
Meanwhile Windows 10 works perfectly fine.

JackE

>>>Meanwhile Windows 10 works perfectly fine.>>> Congrats. That's truly a miracle for a machine designed to run Win10. But give it some time. A Win10 update will likely fix it for you so it doesn't. That's why my Win10 machines are now running MintCinnamon19.2.

Jack E/NJ

nicomunet

>But give it some time. A Win10 update will likely fix it for you so it doesn't.

>MintCinnamon19.2
Hm. I should try it. Maybe it will work flawlessly.

In any case, I installed SSD and now I can run Windows in case openSUSE breaks, or run openSUSE in case Windows breaks.
I hope Windows will not try to overwrite EFI partition on SSD...

JackE

>>>I hope Windows will not try to overwrite EFI partition on SSD... >>>

Won't happen if you don't use it. And if you do, set update services to manual and turn on network metered connection for good measure. Jack E/NJ

Albert1st1

With BIOS v1.15 you don't need pci=noacpi anymore since that bios fixes what was lacking in buggy earlier bioses and is the bios you should use with linux.

In bios prior v1.13 there was a basic mode for touchpad but since v1.13 there's only advanced mode.

About the touchpad "Advanced" mode it should just work with newer kernels but with distributions using older kernels the user often needed to install i2c-amd-mp2 for the touchpad to work but it seems to work for you so you don't need it.

https://github.com/Syniurge/i2c-amd-mp2

If you need to remove and add the module i2c_hid when using sleep then you should add hook for that module.

For hibernation to work you need to add resume= and resume_offset=.

JackE

Thanks for report. However, due to possible regional and production variations, not all a315-41 models necessarily behave the same way to updates. Firmware updates in particular carry much higher risks for introducing adverse side effects (or worse) than device driver and system updates and usually should be considered irreversible. Accordingly, they should only be applied as a last resort to try to fix major crippling issues that can't be resolved by other means using factory-installed firmware. Jack E/NJ

afa

Same issue here. What I see::

* at boot, Linux detects a bug on Acer Firmware (probably this machine was never properly tested to run no-Windows OS)
* Fn+Fx shortcuts are not mapped on the distro I'm using now (Kubuntu)

Got to find some time to manually fix this. So boring, tough.

Note: as DELL user, I find this keyboard uncomfortable. Some keys you often use when on terminal are very hard to reach.
Again, Acer doesn't look like a linux thing at all