Hey guys,

I am trying to install Ubuntu (Mate) on my Dell inspiron 13" 7000 series laptop. I have managed to get it to boot, even through Windows 8's annoying UEFI mode, but now I am stuck. In the live mode of the OSes, my touchscreen works, but the touchpad does not. I would really like to dual boot this laptop, for school and such, but this kind of seems like a show-stopper. Any ideas? (and the drivers from Dell are just for windows...)

thanks,

Exp0sure

Check out the synaptic drivers. You need them for the touchpad to work. I remember having to create a specific section in my Xorg config too, but it was on Arch. Not sure how ubuntu handle it...

Usually with Ubuntu everything should work out of the box even in live-cd. If it doesn't then you might try your luck and check if there's a proprietary driver available out there.

(04-02-2015, 09:16 AM)venam Wrote: if there's a proprietary driver available out there.

Yeah I have, and it's only available for Winders.

I don't mean to start a distro war here. But I am a computer science student, and we do a lot of coding (python, c++, java,...) and I was wondering what distro you guys would recommend. I have always installed Linux on older machines, but now I am looking at installing it alongside my windows 8 install. Any recommendations?

If you're a student and you're just wanting to get 'er done with a minimum of hassle and configuration, then yes, either Ubuntu or Mint would be a good choice.

If you're wanting to delve deeper into the UNIX-sphere, my vote goes with one of these: Slackware, CRUX, Gentoo, Funtoo, or OpenBSD.

After ensuring you have your synaptic drivers installed, check out this configuration:

/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

Paste the contents in a reply here so we may examine them.

Ok. SO a little bit has changed here. I have decided that I want to install Fedora. I know it might not be the best OS, but its one of the only ones that recognizes my trackpad on the live disc (my laptop is a touchscreen, and ubuntu seems to only recognize that). Now, I would like to dual-boot, should I install grub on the Linux partition, and then add that entry to the Windows boot entries via EasyBCD or something like that? Or should I install grub to the MBR? I ask this question because I currently have windows 8 with a UEFI boot, and I have some friends in my comp sci program that have bad stories about not correctly installing Linux and deleting their windows partition (probably by their our stupid fault though...). Thanks for all the help guys :)