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Does anyone know how to get the following to work on Ubuntu 10.04:

  1. The touchpad to work at all? Right now, right clicking doesn't work at at all, and left clicks don't work while you have another finger on the pad at all. It jumps all over. Also, the multi-touch isn't clickable, but it's for sure a multi-touch touchpad. Works in W7 and can do things like a MBP in W7

  2. The computer feels like it's on fire... I think I'm missing some driver.

Seems odd that the random meta keys like calc, email, brightness, right click, etc work, but not the touchpad? The video card seems fine, but I haven't tested compiz fully yet...

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2 Answers

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About the heat on HP Envy Laptops. I have a HP Envy 17 and it ran terribly hot with ubuntu 11.04. Sometimes it would shut down due to overheat. Googling did not provide any solution that worked. Only when i disabled the fglrx driver did the heat come down. Then the laptop became a breeze...

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If you have a brand new laptop and you're running lucid(10.04) on a partition, external HDD, or live CD/stick, you should have no problems whatsoever with the touch pad or other hardware. Actually, it should all still work if your laptop was made in the last 6 years (my laptop is 6 y.o. and runs lucid fine). To address your concerns:

  1. The default setup for the touchpad in lucid is to turn it off while typing so that you accidentally don't move the cursor while typing. Maybe you can turn this setting off and see if that fixes it. You can also try adjusting mouse sensitivity to make the cursor less jumpy. Perhaps you can plug in a mouse and see if that works(if so, you have a problem with your touchpad or the configuration).
  2. If your computer feels like it's on fire, congratulations, you've bought an HP. HP is notorious for heat problems, so it's more likely that your computer is just a toaster oven rather than you missing a driver (never heard of that causing overheating). Try booting Windows 7 and I bet it'll feel like it's on fire anyway.
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No, HPs, like Apple computers, are the multi-touch touchpads. There aren't any physical buttons: hpfansite.com/images/2010/02/hp-envy-15-touchpad.jpg. I had this issue with my Apple MacBook Pro as well, but someone had a driver to (mostly) fix that. I can't find any HP envy drivers yet though, but lots of people complaining Also, the heat issue isn't an issue in W7 for me. It's got vents all around, and the vents are hot in W7 but the bottom isn't. I had this issue with my MBP also, but, again, someone had a driver fix for it. It's not burning my leg off, but hotter than W7 while idle – Oscar Godson Jul 25 '10 at 6:29
If you really need a driver for that particular type of touchpad, you should just turn it off (I know HPs have a button for that) and use a mouse. As for the heat issue, if it really runs hotter on ubuntu (alarmingly hot) you may only want to run ubuntu in an environment where you can cool. I don't know of any driver fixing such a problem. – Rafe Kettler Jul 25 '10 at 7:00
Yeah, it's not alarmingly hot, so maybe it's just the weather change that made me notice it (we here in PDX went from like 70 degrees to 90 degrees in a couple days)... and i actually can't turn off the touchpad from the hardware because, not so ironicly, the hardware to turn it off is ON the touchpad.Its the little dot in that pic i sent... yeah, but i can do it through Ubuntu / terminal, but damn, i really want it to work since everything else is working :\ thanks – Oscar Godson Jul 25 '10 at 7:26

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