Just testing a shiny new Dell Precision M4700, which is great... except the trackpad isn't recognized in Xubuntu 12.04, resulting in no multi-touch - it's amazing how clunky resorting to scroll bars seems now. Anyway, it turns out Dell are not thoroughly supporting the 'Alps' trackpads used on their latest models, which is a shame, as it results in reduced functionality out of the box for a raft of their laptops. (See bug report.)

Fortunately, there is a fix (tested on Xubuntu 12.04):

First, download psmouse-alps-1.3. Then (using sudo / root):

  • Extract the folder psmouse-alps-1.3 to /usr/src
  • cd to /usr/src
  • dkms add psmouse-alps-1.3
  • dkms autoinstall
  • rmmod psmouse && modprobe psmouse

That's it! Working multitouch! :-)