3M Touch Screens

I had to configure a 3M touch screen on Debian 5.0 (lenny) for the embedded PC rebuild project. The short story is that the touch screen works. The long story is that it is kind of quirky.

The download is a .zip file. When you unzip it, you get a .bin file. When you run the the .bin file, you get the EULA. When you accept the EULA, you get a .tar.gz file. Feels like a Matryoshka doll! Why not just have the EULA on the web site when you request the download?

Why is it necessary to modify the the xorg.conf file? The file is changed not just once, but every time the system boots, and on every shutdown. I could forgive this odd requirement if the modified configuration file actually worked! Although the modified xorg.conf file is syntactically correct, the X server won't use the touch input unless you add the device to the ServerLayout section.

While I appreciate 3M's effort to provide a Linux driver, it feels like it wasn't designed by someone with a lot of Linux experience.