Out of curiosity could you try an aptosid live CD? I'd be curious to know if the syndaemon command works with that.

I have to be honest I have ZERO "buntu" experience after giving that up some years ago...
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blm14, it's not common for Debian Testing to have dependency problems and broken packages, that's almost always the sign of trying to install packages from a non-standard repo, especially an ubuntu repo, which is NOT supported in Debian.

In fact, the entire point of Testing is to be the pre stable testing pool, and one of the rules is specifically that there NOT be dependency problems and broken packages. Those go to Sid, where AFTER they are debugged and tested, and found relatively bug free, and dependencies resolved, they are migrated into Testing.

So my guess is you were trying to install some familiar ubuntu app, which of course causes dependency problems and broken packages.

Debian testing if used correctly is a very nice system, very stable, but you can't run ubuntu packages on it unless you actually know what you are doing in terms of not breaking it.

Unless LMDE has actually introduced some issues via their own packages, I do not see this as being a real statement of fact, but rather user induced error.
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I can tell you I just finished up a LMDE install and it went fine. The touchpad was recognized and the settings (including disable while typing) worked fine. After a complete update there were no dependency problems.

The only thing not working on this particular touchpad was the two finger scrolling. All of the rest worked as expected.
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deach, while of course I don't 'know' for a fact, I do have to suspect that when an ex ubuntu user complains about broken dependencies, they almost certainly tried installing an ubuntu package, not realizing that ubuntu and debian are not at all compatible re deb packages, even though both use apt, and ubuntu is based on Debian Sid snapshots.

Now it might be that lmde made a mistake in their core, we did in fact see one such mistake last night with a bad configuration that triggered a console bug when using liquorix, and that was certainly an lmde caused error, without any question.
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I would tend to agree. I did not get the liquorix kernel installed yet on my LMDE installs, I am honestly having a bit of a problem with smxi seeing the internet connection just this minute. I'm not quite used to the LMDE stuff yet only my second install.
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I will download and burn one in the next day or two and try to boot from that. Let you know how that goes...
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Now to be fair, the real only limitation between Ubuntu and the Debian built Liquorix kernels are the dependencies. If the package selection on Ubuntu is sufficiently new enough, then you should be able to install without any difficulty.

It's sort of a hit and miss if you think about it. Sometimes sid updates so far that the base libraries on Ubuntu are too old, or sometimes the dpkg / apt packages are too new on sid. I tried to remove as many of those as possible so that it's not a problem. I personally have had no problems installing my own kernels on Ubuntu even when there were dependency conflicts. I just forced the installation anyway and the next boot seemed fine to me.

It would be nice though if there was someone familiar with Ubuntu's source packages that could build packages for ubuntu using their PPA system. Though, I know you are all busy, so I don't expect anyone to go out of their way to do that.
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OK so I burned this image file:

aptosid-2011-01-geras-kde-lite-amd64-201102051540

Since I didn't have any blank DVDs at home (fresh out!) to do the full DVD image. It booted, but the screen was INCREDIBLY dark. Even with contrast and brightness all the way up from the FN key shortcuts it was just barely readable, which was interesting!

System settings only showed mouse, I didn't see anything having to do with "touchpad" and running syndaemon from command line gave the old familiar "no synaptics device found" message. :(
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I can honestly say I have no clue. As I do not have that exact model laptop (but have done several with alps) I am honestly without a clue I guess. If I can come up with anything I'll let you know. I will look at that E5400 when I get it back into my hands and see exactly how I have kdetouchpad configured.

Regards,
Greg
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I will seriously let you have SSH access to it
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