Touch Me: Ubuntu to Improve Touchscreen Support in 9.10

"Do you have a touchscreen that isn't working in Ubuntu? We need your help!" is Amit Kucheria's opening words in his blog. His initiative is to collect hardware information on touchscreens for Ubuntu's 9.10 release by requesting submissions to Bug #317094.

The USB touchscreens may be recognized by the kernel's usbtouchscreen module, but their IDs are not yet on the list of supported devices.

To investigate the device ID, first use lsusb to get the vendor and product ID, then use sudo to load the usbtouchscreen module and sysfs to add the ID to it. Finally, write the ID to the /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usbtouchscreen/new_id file. For example, with a 1473:0158 device ID:

sudo modprobe usbtouchscreen
sudo sh -c "echo 147e 0158 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usbtouchscreen/new_id"

If you can thereby make the touchscreen work with Karmic Koala, report the vendor and product ID and the name of the touchscreen to Ubuntu developers by using the bug submission.