Touchscreen in Dell latitude xt requires graphic drivers for ubuntu 10.10

I won a laptop called dell latitude xt. I hope that you have heard about this laptop before. I have already installed windows 7 on it and it works fine. So the system hardware is also out of issue. Now I would like to install ubuntu on it. As you know the laptop has very creative touchscreen. So I have installed ubuntu10.10 netbook edition 32x. But the system was unable to manage its touchscreen and also the VGA drivers. I have tried several ati drivers which downloaded and installed but I didn’t get any result. The aticonfig is always saying that “No supported adapters detected”. What should I do with this touchscreem? Should I have to go back to the Windows7? If there is any way to make it work please helps me with your answer.

I have searched some of the ubuntu forums regarding your issue and I found that the solution for it. It seems to be that it can be achieved by editing the kernel argument. When you booting the computer, press shift key to enter the Grub menu. In that menu choose the kernel which you went to boot and then press e key to edit parameters. There might be option like GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="..." . Now you need to edit this statement by adding this line Add radeon.modeset=0. Now the Line should be looking like this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.modeset=0".
Once you have finished press ctrl+X to exit the boot.

I think you didn’t find the suitable drivers yet. What version of drivers you have tried to install? As my knowledge concern the card is especially supported by radeon drivers. The problem may be that missing of specific PCI ID. You try to forcing it using the ChipID if you have. The ChipId mostly present in the directive /etc/X11/xorg.conf. As far as the touch screen issue concern changing the drivers may help to avoid the problem.

I think you might not be aware that you have installed the modern version of distribution. These modern distros requires modern drivers wither for display or for graphic. The AMD/ATI will provide proprietary drivers that may not work with GPU or touchscreen on your modern ubuntu 10.10. You might have heard about the open source drivers. These drivers will give you the good 2D and 3D accelerations. So before doing anything regarding the drivers or updating them you have to remove the drivers installed before.

As I know that the ubuntu 10.10 is specially designed for portable touchscreen enabled devices. The ubuntu 10.10 supports multitouch feature for the touchscreen pads. So I don’t think that the graphics drivers are necessary in dell latitude xt. Te inbuilt function in ubuntu automatically detects the touchscreen device. For your problem concern you might get some problem during the installation. Once again re-install the ubuntu 10.10 and see whether it will work or not. Also check in the graphics configuration wizard for manual setup.