HP TouchSmart 300 (Model # 300-1020) Touch Screen issues.. W/ Debian 9 Stretch

w00tus · 11-02-2018, 03:25 PM

Hello again gurus!

I've gotten myself stuck again. I dug this old AIO pc out of storage and was told it is to be used as the thin client for the front desk because it has a touch screen. What could go wrong you ask? lol

As said in the title, it's an HP TouchSmart Model 300-1020. I'm running my favorite distro, Debian 9 (Stretch). Have enabled non-free in the repositories, multiarch (and intsalled the i386 links) plus installed firmware-amd-graphics and rebooted. The touch screen didn't work out of the box or after all of this. Which isn't a big deal, Linux requires some love sometimes.

So I hit the googles and came across the following:

Quote:

3.3. Touch Screen

The touch screen is actually made by a company called NextWindow, who makes a lot of HP's (and other) touch screens. They have a proprietary driver that they've announced in bug 379313. Search through for the term "nwfermi" to see if there are any later releases, but version 0.4.5 works for me in Maverick (the 64-bit version is here). You can also download it from my server in i386 or amd64 flavors if you think I'm more trustworthy than Launchpad.

Note: There was a new release posted here that claims to support Multitouch. Sadly, I'm not around for the next few days so I'm not able to actually test this. You may download it from me in i386 or amd64 architectures.

Just open the package or run sudo dpkg -i nwfermi-0.4.5_i386.deb or sudo dpkg -i nwfermi-0.4.5_amd64.deb from your download directory and it should be installed. Reboot and things should be working fine.

The developer who's been posing the updates has just created a Launchpad Site for the Nextwindow Fermi driver supporting the 1950 and 3000 series hardware - expect a PPA soon. In the mean time, you may with to sign up to the bug reports list so you can be sure to keep tabs on the project.

Which led me here:

nwfirmi Launchpad

I downloaded the latest nwfirmi, thinking newer is better, right? (I swear I read somewhere on one of these pages that though the .deb didn't say it supported the other like hardware, it still did..)

Anyway, I don't know if it supports it or not, because I can't get it installed! I tried dpkg and gdebi. No dice. Unsatisfiable dependencies. Output as follows:

Quote:

root@guestservices:/home/guestservices/Downloads# gdebi nwfermi-0.6.5.0_amd64.deb
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading state information... Done
This package is uninstallable
Dependency is not satisfiable: linux-headers-generic|linux-headers

root@guestservices:/home/guestservices/Downloads# dpkg -i nwfermi-0.6.5.0_amd64.deb
(Reading database ... 141753 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack nwfermi-0.6.5.0_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking nwfermi (0.6.5.0) over (0.6.5.0) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of nwfermi:
nwfermi depends on dkms; however:
Package dkms is not installed.
nwfermi depends on linux-headers-generic | linux-headers; however:
Package linux-headers-generic is not installed.
Package linux-headers is not installed.
nwfermi depends on ia32-libs; however:
Package ia32-libs is not installed.
nwfermi depends on xf86-input-nextwindow; however:
Package xf86-input-nextwindow is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package nwfermi (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
nwfermi
root@guestservices:/home/guestservices/Downloads#

The list was way longer before, but I went and installed every dependency that was in Debian's repos one at a time, apt updating/cleaning/autoremoving each time that it would let me install. This is what I'm left with. I installed headers using

Code:

apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

since trying to install linux-headers-generic didn't fly.

Any ideas how I can get this to install? Or perhaps someone knows of another way than what I'm attempting that works just as well/better?

Thanks in advance!

Timothy Miller · 11-03-2018, 12:12 PM

Given the age of those packages, I doubt you're going to get them working. I'd try building the driver from the github repo.

w00tus · 11-15-2018, 01:19 PM

So I downloaded and installed, following the directions on the gibhub page you posted (thank you very much, btw!) to the letter. The only part I couldn't follow was the xf86-input-nextwindow part.. I didn't add the repo because I'm using Debian Stretch instead of Ubuntu. (It's based on Debian, but I've had catastrophically mixed results with using Ubuntu repos.)

The touchscreen still doesn't work, unfortunately. As you said, the packages may simply be too dated.

Since this PC is a salvage, I am going to pull the back off of it and make sure that all cables are properly seated. I was told that a computer shop here in town gave up on fixing it (same people who don't have a psu tester) way before I was hired at the spa and the owner just set it in a storage room. Apparently she'd not owned it very long and couldn't stand to throw it away.

If you have any other suggestions, possibly about xorg drivers, I'd definitely like to give them a go.

Again, thank you so much for the input!

fritzferr · 11-14-2019, 05:17 PM

Hey Wootus,

thanks for the leg work on this issue. I realize this is years out of date, but like you I'm trying to resuscitate my touchsmart and use the touchscreen. I did got through all the links and suggestions you had and since I'm using a Ubuntu-esque build (Deepin) things appeared to be working somewhat until I got to the make portion in the readme. I get an attempt at a make and then an error that says check the log. As far as I can tell it appears that somethings missing. hah! If you still get messages from this forum and are interested in helping let me know.

Fritz

ondoho · 11-16-2019, 02:58 AM

I would just try to run a recent (18.04 LTS) Ubuntu, or maybe Xubuntu, on it.
Or maybe KDE Neon or some such.
Might also try purism's OS, Pure OS iirc.

If that doesn't work, I postulate the following:
this device sits at the bottom of a valley:

Linux touchscreen support hadn't yet caught up when this device came out (2011)
Linux touchscreen development has since concentrated on different hardware
your lappy is cursed with a forever beta touchpad driver

That's a bold statement with almost no facts to back it up, so I might be wrong.

fritzferr · 11-16-2019, 12:49 PM

Hey Ondoho,

I believe your postulations are correct. The touchsmart uses some off brand touchscreen technology and Linux didn't support that back in the day. And you are correct that the kernel is all about the most common hardware. And if I could get the nwfermi things working it might just be a touchpad kind of thing. That was a warning from from the other folks in other forums.

So I took a look at the other builds and really didn't see anything that stood out beyond my Deepin 15.11. Which is supposed to have excellent built-in support for touchscreens (again, wrong tech). One fellow suggest Arch because of their package management. I haven't totally given up sorting out the driver issue, but I'll consider that next.

Thanks, though.