[Windows 8 General] murakh:
Linux woes

[MENTION=6915532]icsoft[/MENTION] (& any other linux experts) can anyone please tell me why the Touchscreen does work under Linux ?(e.g. (l)Ubuntu & Mint)

My current goal was to have both Cinnamon DE (for "docked / laptop" mode) and Gnome-shell for tablet mode as the latter has a more touch-friendly interface.

BUT the following problems:

On Mint 17+ Cinnamon & Gnome-shell are incompatible

Mint 17.2 Cinnamon (before gnome-shell installation) works as both a live CD and when installed to the SSD, touchscreen and stylus work fine (module hid_multitouch must be loaded though for touchscreen)

On Debian 8.2 "jessie" (installed to SSD) Cinnamon & Gnome can co-exist, but touchscreen does not work (stylus works) (Debian 8.2 Live CD does not work as EFI is not supported)

Fedora 23 Live CD loads but touchscreen does not work, stylus works

OpenSuse Tumbleweed - Live CD starts to boot, but then fails at what seems to be an IO error (tried multiple variations but never successful)

OpenSuse Leap - Live CD works, cannot recall now if touchscreen does or doesnt work, but I think not

Ubuntu Desktop 15.10 - Live CD works, touchscreen and stylus works. Not tested, but seems Cinnamon does have some issues installing on Ubuntu, plus it is my preference NOT to use Ubuntu Desktop on any of my machines.

Trying to do a comparison with "xinput list" between Mint & Debian shows that the FTSC1000:00 2808:5012 is present in Mint but not in Debian, which must be the Focal Tech touch interface. But I cannot find that in lsusb, nor lspci. In Debian there is a mouse0, mouse1 and mouse2 listed (under /dev/input) and doing a "cat /dev/input/" on mouse1 and mouse2 will give me input if I move my finger on the trackpad or use the stylus, respectively, but mouse0 just gives an error.

Doing "less proc/input/devices" has an entry for the Focal Tech, and dmesg has an entry for input ending in (paraphrasing) ."... device on" and it seems something is missing, as I would expect "on mousex" or something like that. Module hid_multitouch is forced to load in /etc/modules but makes no difference

Lastly I also tried to compile the .c driver for FocalTech edt-ft5x06 but the Makefile details I used just resulted in make failing (not even sure if this driver would be correct)

From what I have gathered so far is that it must be connected via the i2c (bus?) which is why it does not show in lsusb or lspci and the i2c modules are showing in lsmod.

So what I would like to know, if anyone can please help, is either why the touchscreen does work in Mint, so if it is a driver or module then it can be loaded in Debian, or why it doesn't work correctly in Debian so that can be solved.

Again this has become a challenge more for fun than out of real necessity, but will definitely appreciate any help as this is far out of my knowledge zone on linux.

Additionally: Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon BETA was released yesterday, they have finally fixed the on-screen keyboard issue on the default MDM login screen. The plan for me is to test this and then add KDE Plasma 5 using larger icons and a vertical panel for my touch mode, as an possible alternate to Gnome-shell

Update: Onscreen keyboard is displayed on the MDM login screen, but still not when you need to unlock the system after sleep or locking :(