Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 14IAN8 Touchpad Not Recognized on Linux Lite

[nick12358]

Hi everyone,

I recently installed Linux Lite 6.4 on my Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 14IAN8, and I'm having trouble getting the touchpad to work. The touchpad worked perfectly fine in Windows, but it's not even being recognized by Linux Lite.

I've tried the following troubleshooting steps:

BIOS: Confirmed that the touchpad is enabled in the BIOS settings.
FN Keys: Tested all FN key combinations (Fn + F6, Fn + F8, etc.) with no effect.
Drivers: Installed and updated the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics driver.
GRUB: Modified the GRUB configuration with various parameters (i8042.nopnp=1 pci=nocrs).
X11 Configuration: Verified that the touchpad isn't disabled in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf.
Blacklisted Modules: Confirmed no touchpad-related entries in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.
Hardware Switch: Checked for a physical switch, but my model doesn't have one.
Reinstalled Input Drivers: Reinstalled xserver-xorg-input-all without success.
Kernel Modules: I also tried manually loading the psmouse and elan_i2c kernel modules, even though they weren't listed in the output of lsmod, but it didn't make a difference.

Additional Information:

The touchpad isn't detected in Linux Lite's "Mouse and Touchpad" settings.
xinput output:
Virtual core pointer              id=2    [master pointer (3)]
⎜  ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer          id=4    [slave pointer (2)]
⎜  ↳ Razer Razer Taipan              id=7    [slave pointer (2)]
⎜  ↳ Razer Razer Taipan Keyboard          id=8    [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard              id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
  ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard          id=5    [slave keyboard (3)]
  ↳ Power Button                  id=6    [slave keyboard (3)]
  ↳ Razer Razer Taipan              id=9    [slave keyboard (3)]
  ↳ Integrated Camera: Integrated C        id=10    [slave keyboard (3)]
  ↳ Ideapad extra buttons              id=11    [slave keyboard (3)]
  ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard          id=12    [slave keyboard (3)]
  ↳ Razer Razer Taipan Keyboard          id=13    [slave keyboard (3)]

sudo dmidecode -t 3 output:

# dmidecode 3.3
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.4 present.

Handle 0x0003, DMI type 3, 22 bytes
Chassis Information
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Type: Notebook
Lock: Not Present
Version: IdeaPad Slim 3 14IAN8
Serial Number: PF4Z8QKW
Asset Tag: NO Asset Tag
Boot-up State: Safe
Power Supply State: Safe
Thermal State: Safe
Security Status: None
OEM Information: 0x00000000
Height: Unspecified
Number Of Power Cords: 1
Contained Elements: 0
SKU Number: SKU Number

I'm hoping someone in the Lenovo or Linux Lite community has encountered this issue and can offer a solution.

Is there a specific driver or firmware update I should try? Any configuration tweaks that might help? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[WytWun]

This model appears to be fairly recent - certainly more recent than the Linux kernels in Lite 6.4, so various drivers (which are part of the Linux kernel rather than separate downloads like Windows) haven't been updated to identify your specific hardware (this comment applies to your sound thread too).

First, update your installation to Lite 6.6 (Settings -> Lite Upgrade)

Then use the Kernel Installer in Lite Tweaks (Settings -> Lite Tweaks) to install the most recent kernel version available.  Some googling suggests you will need to at least kernel 6.6 for driver support for some similar Lenovo products.

Keep in mind that such kernels might introduce other problems, and they aren't updated the same way as the base kernel (5.15, which is an LTS kernel with fixes - but not driver hardware support updates - backported regularly).