Elantech Touchpad on Fujitsu Notebook in Ubuntu

So I’ve got a brand-new notebook, however I could not choose the device on my own – it was bought by my company.

It’s a Fujitsu E5410. A decent machine, even though I expected more w.t.t battery time. Also the case feels not that sturdy, too much plastic. Personally I still prefer the Thinkpad T line of models.

One problem is that Fujitsu E5410 uses an Elantech Touchpad. And I had quite some trouble getting this one to work in Ubuntu 20.04. The Touchpad is not recognized at all in Ubuntu. Moreover when using the stock kernel, sometimes the keyboard would not work too. So you are at the login-screen, and both keyboard and touchpad are not working; and without a USB-keyboard there is no way to even shut down the computer properly.

The reason is that modern Touchpad use a weird HID over I2C protocol. It was developed by Microsoft, and rumor has it that manufacturers don’t follow that protocol strictly.

Here is how to get it working:

1.) Install the Ubuntu OEM kernel:

sudo apt install linux-oem-20.04b 

2.) Load the i2c_hid and i2c_hid_acpi upon startup by creating a textfile which contains two lines with the names of the kernel modules

cd /etc/modules-load.d
sudo printf "i2c_hid\ni2c_hid_acpi" > i2c_hid.conf

And that’s it. It tried other kernels, like the default Ubuntu kernel or a mainline kernel, but then either the keyboard would not work anymore, or „tap-to-click“ would not work with the touchpad. Another advantage with the OEM kernel over mainline kernels is that it is signed, so there is no requirement to deactivate Secure Boot. Now, I am not a fan, but it’s still better than nothing…