Good question, actually. I did try a few live distros on the first day I got the new netbook (at least Debian, Xubuntu and Elive among them), but I did not notice any major difference in hardware support, so I chose Debian testing. Probably mostly because that's what I have been using with all of my notebooks/netbooks for more than ten years now (stable on desktops and servers). Which Debian version or other distribution/derivative would you recommend for this kind of device?
In the mean time I have collected some more information:
I compiled a custom kernel 4.12.6 (debian source package linux-source-4.12, version 4.12.6-1) with every config option that I thought might be related to the ELANTECH touch screen turned on. Indeed this did bring the touch screen back to life.
However, I am convinced that is
not due to the new kernel, because I noticed another thing:
After hibernation or soft restarts, the touch screen does not work (reproducibly). On the console, I see the following error message:
> i2c_designware 808622C1:06: controller timed out
> i2c_hid i2c_SIS0817:00: failed to change power setting.
The message is printed again every time I switch from X11 to the console via Ctrl-Alt-F1, etc.
Also, the touch screen does not work if I reboot with a different kernel (regardless which kernel) -- unless the system is physically powered off for a couple of seconds.
After a complete shutdown of the system (power off for a couple of seconds), the touch screen works again, with all three kernels (stock 4.11.0, stock 4.12.0, custom 4.12.6).
I apologize for the confusion, I should have tested more thoroughly earlier.
Still, I would like to have the touch screen working after sleep/hibernate/soft restart. Any ideas on how to proceed from here?
Where could I open a bug report for this issue?
P.S.: Just for completeness and my own reference I have posted the output of dmesg (saved after a cold start with the touch screen working) on pastebin:
https://pastebin.com/FitQAgJ7
P.P.S.: While I am at it: Multitouch input does not work with my touch screen and never did with any of the kernels/distros tested by me. I think that libinput acutally lacks support for multitouch with this type of touch screen, but I might have missed something. If anyone did get this working with a similar touch screen, I would be delighted to hear about it.