Ubuntu – How to enable multi touch on a Dell inspiron n5110 with an ALPS touchpad

Just didn't want to take credits for solving that problem. I did everything it said in that blog. Here's what I did in the terminal:

1. wget -O psmouse.tgz http://www.dahetral.com/public-download/psmouse-alps-dst-0.4.tbz/at_download/file
2. tar -xvf psmouse.tgz
3. cd usr/src/psmouse-alps-dst-0.4/src/
4. wget -O alps.c http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=m404GW1G
5. cd ../..
6. sudo mv psmouse-alps-dst-0.4 /usr/src/
7. cd /usr/src/psmouse-alps-dst-0.4/
8. sudo dkms add psmouse/alps-dst-0.4
9. sudo dkms autoinstall
10. sudo rmmod psmouse && sudo modprobe psmouse

• When I got to 10 it complained about psmouse module not existing so I did 9 again and just sudo modprobe psmouse and multitouch was already working. Then I rebooted and did 9 and 10 again because the touchpad had a lag and moved really slow. Don't know exatly what solved that but it's working great now.

I had a similar problem with my alps touchpad. It worked on 12.10, but not on 12.04. (Have you tried yours in 12.10?) I wanted 12.04, however, so what I ended up doing was testing newer and newer kernels. I ended up with the 3.6.3 kernel, and everything is working great. (If you try this, of course do the research & take the necessary precautions, e.g. back-up.)