Win Max 2 2024, No Touchpad, No Touch Screen, Using Joystick

User Support
1

There is a guide out there about configuring a Win Max 2 for Qubes. The bios is different now so Alt + F5 has fewer advanced options. IOMMU is enabled.

Under sys-usb, there is a device called “Mouse for Windows” and another device that could be the touch screen. I don’t know how to connect “Mouse for Windows” to dom0 since it’s in sys-usb.

Navigating this way is awful and if I can’t get the touchscreen to work I will probably just install a different Linux distro.

If I can get the Mouse for Windows to connect to dom0, it would make it easier to see if I can find solutions to the touchscreen problem.

when i attach “mouse for windows” to a VM, the joystick stops working and so this is probably for the joystick, not the touchpad

I want to run Qubes and am willing to try anything, but having no touchpad or touchscreen and only the joy stick makes this unusable right now.

2

Go to Q → Gear icon → Qubes Tools → Qubes Global Config → USB Devices → set Touchscreen/Tablet to “always ask” for sys-usb.

3

I uninstalled Qubes but can try again with another reinstall. When I ran Qubes it asked me if I wanted to allow sys-usb to interact with dom0. It asked me about the keyboard.

I don’t think there was something set to deny that caused the problem. I could also see the touchpad device listed in XFCE’s settings for mouse and touchpads.

Even if I get the touchpad to work, the screen is a touchscreen and it doesn’t respond at all. Any idea on how to get a touch screen in Qubes to work? I’ve used Qubes on another touchscreen before and it did not require special configuration. I am not sure if there’s anything in dom0 I can install?

4

This did not work, setting to always ask doesn’t get touchpad or screen to work

Under Mouse and Touchpad, there are multiple devices:

GXTP, not sure what it does, can turn it on and off without impacting joystick

sys-usb: Mouse for Windows: turning off disables joystick

PNP(many #s): Touchpad: it’s on but doesn’t work

PNP: Mouse: it’s on and not sure what it does

5

Try to add ioapic_ack=new to the Xen boot options in GRUB.
This issue seems to be related:

1 Like
6

How do I do this?

I opened up grub.cfg and it says at the top “#never edit this file”

is that what I edit?

7

Append this line to the /etc/default/grub in dom0:

GRUB_CMDLINE_XEN_DEFAULT="$GRUB_CMDLINE_XEN_DEFAULT ioapic_ack=new"

And run this command in dom0:

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
8

this didn’t work or I didn’t do it correctly

upon reboot, it got to the drive and started running things and then went black screen nothing for minutes

it was easier to just reinstall again from usb which took over an hour, mostly unattended

is there a way to confirm this option entered right before reboot? don’t think had typos but not sure

Is there a way to get this into dom0 and paste it into terminal using cat?

9

if i already have 1 ```
GRUB_CMDLINE_XEN_DEFAULT


is it alright to make a second line or must they be merged?
10

It’s alright to have multiple lines like this, just add it as a separate line.

Did you update dom0 during the last successful Qubes OS boot when you’ve added this GRUB option?

You can add this option during boot like this:

At the end of the first line starting with multiboot2 for Xen options.

Also the content of the global clipboard is in /run/qubes/qubes-clipboard.bin so you can get it from there as well.

1 Like
11

I added it exactly to dom0 a second time, without moving it to dom0, and checked it.

It still didn’t boot.

I hadn’t updated dom0 the second time. I’ll try to update dom0 and try it again. If it doesn’t work after updating dom0, I’ll have to use another distro for now.

12

You can try to add nomodeset to the kernel command line options in GRUB for a test if it’s an issue with a GPU driver that is causing the black screen like this:
Autostart troubleshooting | Qubes OS

13

i don’t know how to use grub and this would take a while to learn. i’ll have to go to another distro for now until i have a few days to figure it out. I am trying one more time.

i am not sure if this is the same file I am editing that you want me to add that line to?

14

if i merge the lines do i still need the $ part? and does that come in the beginning or before the option?

15

Check the link, it’s described in detail with screenshots. Just use nomodeset instead of qubes.skip_autostart.
You can use this way to test the GRUB options because when you add them this way they won’t be persistent and will only apply to the current boot.

If you will want to make it persistent then for kernel command line options you need to add the option to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX instead of GRUB_CMDLINE_XEN_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub.
If you want to append to the existing variable instead of adding it in a separate line then just add it at the end of the existing one without $GRUB_CMDLINE_XEN_DEFAULT part.

16

Hi @wmrom, welcome to the forum!

Sadly, I haven’t had the financial capacity to be able to get my hands on a GPD Win Max 2 to play around with, but I wrote the guides on most of the other GPD devices.

It’s highly likely that “Mouse for Windows” actually is your gamepad. GPD devices usually come with a hardware switch somewhere on the laptop that will change the identifier of the joystick to and from “Mouse for Windows” and “Xbox 360 Controller”.

When the gamepad is set to being “Mouse for Windows”, the on-board gamepad firmware usually maps the controls like this (at least, on the GPD Win Max 1 models):

Button Function
Left Joystick Up W Key
Left Joystick Down S Key
Left Joystick Left A Key
Left Joystick Right D Key
Right Joystick Up Cursor Up
Right Joystick Down Cursor Down
Right Joystick Left Cursor Left
Right Joystick Right Cursor Right
L1 Button Left-click
L2 Button Middle-click
R1 Button Right-click
R2 Button Move the cursor faster
D-Pad Up Mouse Scroll Up
D-Pad Down Mouse Scroll Down
D-Pad Left Page Up
D-Pad Right Page Down
Y (Triangle) Button Up Arrow
A (X) Button Down Arrow
X (Square) Button Left Arrow
B (Circle) Button Right Arrow
Start Nothing
Select Nothing
Menu Nothing

Most GPD devices come with the following:

Interface Device Model Device Name
i2c GXTP7385 Goodix Capacitive TouchScreen
i2c PNP0C50 Mouse/Trackpad
USB 2f24:0118 Mouse for Windows
USB 045e:028e Microsoft Corp. Xbox360 Controller

Newer models also come with accelerometers, gyroscopes, temperature sensors, and fingerprint readers, which are connected via i2c.

A quick search online showed this, but honestly I don’t know how much help it may be: GitHub - Sabrina-Fox/WM2-Help: GPD Win Max 2 Wiki/Guide

I agree with you on this. I have gotten used to it, but at first it was pretty jarring…

The “Mouse for Windows” should automatically be picked up by sys-usb and a qubes.InputMouse dialog box should show up, asking you to confirm it’s attachment to dom0.

Does this not happen…?

On the GPD Pocket 3, the keyboard and trackpad are only USB, so I had to compromise:

  • Allow all keyboard devices into dom0 without asking (otherwise I wouldn’t be able to type my password in)
  • Ask for all other HID devices (mice, tablets, touchscreens)
    It’s not ideal, but it’s usable…

Without doing any thorough investigation (sorry, I don’t have access to the GPD WinMax 2 hardware at the moment…), a few things you can try are:

  • Check the BIOS to see if the keyboard/touchpad are interfacing via USB, PS/2, or both
    • the GPD Win Max 2021 AMD model had this option in the BIOS
  • If you want it to automatically accept any USB device that says it’s a mouse/keyboard, you can add a rule in /etc/qubes/policy.d/
    - WARNING: This will cause any device that tells your computer that it’s a mouse to be automatically let into dom0, even if it’s lying. Your choice if you want to do this.

@apparatus is right. If that works, ignore what I suggested, because it’s much more complicated :laughing:

The Goodix Capacitive TouchScreen is pretty standard in the industry, and has pretty good Linux support baked into almost every kernel (and has had it for quite a long time).

Honestly, you shouldn’t need to…

Whilst GPD have made some pretty great hardware in the past, none of the models internal components seem to have anything in common. It’s almost as if they are quite happy to compromise on hardware consistency (substitute internal components for “whatever works”, even if the substitute is inferior or buggy), just for the sake of “getting a product out to market”.

The appeal of GPD laptops (at least, the appeal for me) are the fact that they are compact and not “potato computers”. Their specs and internals would give some desktops a run for their money. Not to mention they usually come with quite a lot of I/O ports (RS-232 Serial, RJ45 Ethernet, Oculink, etc.), which is very difficult to find on laptops nowadays.

I would love to post a full write-up on how to get the GPD Win Max 2 100% working with Qubes OS, and I will once I get my hands on one. But I haven’t got access to one at the moment :frowning:

17

Hello,
I have a Win Max 2 2024 and I cant even install QUBES, how did you manage to do it?
I was able to get a picture on the verbose option of installing:

1234567(XEN) Xen call trace:
(XEN)    [<ffff82d0403adff8>] R amd_iommu_prepare+0x288/0x390
(XEN)    [<ffff82d0403ae119>] S amd_iommu_init+0x19/0x3c0
(XEN)    [<ffff82d0403ae746>] S pci_amd_iommu.c#iov_detect+0x26/0x70
(XEN)    [<ffff82d0403b24ac>] S iommu_setup+0x3c/0x230
(XEN)    [<ffff82d0403d3562>] S __start_xen+0x1672/0x264a
(XEN)    [<ffff82d040275724>] S __high_start+0x94/0xa0
Panic on CPU0:
Xen BUG at drivers/passthrough /and/iommu_init.c:1386

I managed to take a picture before it auto-reboots.

18

Did you enable IOMMU in BIOS?

19

I’ve read your guide and read Sabrina Fox’s guide, of course.

Win Max 2 has no need to rotate the touch screen. But the touch screen doesn’t respond to touch.

The trackpad just doesn’t work no matter what I select. There may be some sort of complex tricks I can try in grub or something in the bios that would change this, but it will take trial and error and with my linux knowledge (which is low) it will take a lot of time.

The trackpad not working makes everything so time consuming to even just test.

There wasn’t anything in Sabrina’s guide that made the problem go away. I could deal with just the joystick if the touchpad worked or touch screen worked, but both not working and just the joystick is too difficult.

20

Check the hash of your iso.

Burn the iso to a USB drive a second time.

Try again.

Check the model of your Win Max 2024 to make sure it is a 2024. Some people reported getting 2023 and it was called 2024.

It boots easily when I used it. I may have had to press return at certain points or wait for it to display errors but it loaded. Qubes is very particular with it’s files and if your drive has a 0 instead of a 1 in just 1 place, Qubes will sometimes try to do the install anyway and then it will just not boot.

Check your bios firmware version. It’s probably the new one.