# Inspiron 6000 touchpad and power button

## SGWineo

Hi all,

Fairly new to linux, had Kubuntu working on my laptop previously and got a HWInfo print out, simple and full, before formatting (in case we need). I installed Gentoo 2008.0-r1 on my Dell Inspiron 6000 starting 4 days ago (looks more interesting and challenging :) ).

I did the minimal install and followed the manual.. this time (had previously done the liveCD install and internet didnt work, so i formatted and decided to do it the real way).  I spent a day reading and finding everything in the kernel I could need, anything that said ATI or Radeon for graphics, ICH stuff for hard drive, the broadcom 440x eth... my hwinfo printout says B44 driver, so i guessed that was it (naming isn't very consistent). So was kind of redundant, I assume if I picked an unneeded driver or 2 no biggie? and multiple filesystem supports fine? Besides that, to the book installation.

I kind of assume I didn't pick the needed drivers/options in kernel setup for power button and touchpad(mouse) for my laptop.  I hope not as I assume that is a big to-do to re-do.

What config files, settings, etc. could be causing these problems?  and what other information would be helpful to diagnose this.

Thanks for any ideas

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## pianosaurus

 *SGWineo wrote:*   

> So was kind of redundant, I assume if I picked an unneeded driver or 2 no biggie? and multiple filesystem supports fine?

 

That should work just fine. I have support for a ton of different file systems compiled as modules, just in case I ever dig out my old amiga drives. I probably never will...

 *SGWineo wrote:*   

> I kind of assume I didn't pick the needed drivers/options in kernel setup for power button and touchpad(mouse) for my laptop. 

 

The power button is part of ACPI. Make sure you have what you need enabled under Power Management -> ACPI (IIRC) in the kernel, and disable everything under Power Management -> APM (outdated).

The touchpad should work in X if you use the evdev driver for your mouse in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. If you want extended functionality such as scrolling by dragging on the right side, or clicking by tapping the pad, you need to use the synaptics driver. I would recommend enabling both the evdev and the synaptics use flags and recompiling xorg-server.

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