So this morning,, Ubuntu tells me it has updates, so…I do the updates. Then it tells me it needs to reboot, so…I reboot. When it comes back up…the trackpad doesn’t work. I try a wireless mouse…doesn’t work. I then feel the rage of a thousand geeks and press <Ctrl><Alt><F2> to get to the console.

I log in (since I can still type at least) and try to see if sudo reboot will magically make things better. It doesn’t.

So I log in graphically and I then press the “Windows”/Super key on the keyboard to access the search menu. I type in “Synaptic” to get to Synaptic Package Manager, select it and get to it’s search feature using the Tab key and the arrows on my keyboard. I search for “pointing” to try and locate a package that handles pointing devices. I find gpointing-device-settings and from the description it sounds like it will solve the problem. Synaptic will let me select it, but I can’t get it to Apply.

So, I close Synaptic using <Alt><F4>, hit the Super key again, search for Terminal, select it using the Tab button, and in the Terminal I enter:

sudo apt-get install gpointing-device-settings

….and after entering my password it installs.

I then enter sudo reboot and when the computer starts up, I finally have my trackpad working again.

These are the kind of bugs that make people worry about trying a Linux distro, or, make them walk away from one when they don’t know what to do.