PIxelbook 2017 Eve - Touch Screen not responding

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1

System Details

  • Device: Pixelbook 2017 Eve
  • OS: Fedora 44
  • Firmware Type: UEFI Full ROM
  • Firmware Version: 1.5.0
  • Internal storage type: NVMe

Summary of the Issue

Touchscreen not responsive. Many users report that the touchscreen works out of the box with a supported Linux distro. I’ve tried Mint 22.3 (unsupported by MrChromebox), Ubuntu 26.04, and Fedora 44. WCOM50C1 is listed as an input device using libinput list-devices and there are no error messages in dmesg. I can provide a full dump of dmesg if necessary. I wasn’t able to figure out how to boot either Ubuntu or Fedora into Xorg instead of Wayland to see if that fixes it. (Edit: looks like xorg is not shipped with current GNOME 50 distros.)

FYI: this is my first time using Linux, so I do need some hand-holding, but I’ve done a ton of research into this issue and I haven’t found a solution.

EDIT: Looks like there are a lot of errors in dmesg that I didn’t see. I can initiate an error by touching the screen: “iio iio:device5: Unknown activity: 2”

Input 5 is

Device: WCOM50C1:00 2D1F:5143
Kernel: /dev/input/event5
Id: i2c:2d1f:5143

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Flash firmware UEFI (touchpad updated - no issues with touchpad input)

  2. Install Linux distro

  3. ???

Expected Behavior

Should just work out of the box according to many other users…shrug

2

Just want to echo this problem and bump it back up - same model, same problem across FW 2603.1 and 2603.2 (UEFI). I’m running Ubuntu 26.04 but the touchscreen issue persisted across multiple other distros (Fedora, Mint, Arch, Ubuntu 24.04). Touchscreen worked without issue on ChromeOS. Basically everything else just worked out of the box, and none of the troubleshooting I could find addressed this problem.

The only new piece of information I can contribute: this laptop came with a powered stylus (Pixelbook Pen or something inane like that), and that stylus does work on the touchscreen, but only when powered. No response for anything else, but at least I know it’s possible to get it working.

I’m also pretty new to Linux and am at the limit of the troubleshooting I’m capable of doing on my own. I was following along and hoping there would be a response to this thread at some point, but thought it was worth chiming in to say it’s not an isolated issue. Happy to try any recommended steps and provide logs if anyone is willing to lend a hand.

3

Thanks for the reply, but I think this is pretty much a lost cause for my computer. I did a bit of troubleshooting and I think the ribbon cable on my touchscreen may be broken/disconnected. It’s not something I’m willing to repair, so I can’t know for sure.

As far a the iio device, I think that’s the gyro and was working properly on my computer.