Today I installed Linux Mint on an Asus X551CA laptop.
Everything was fine except Mint being shit and the damn Elantech touchpad being even worse than Mint.
I will never understand why the fuckers at Canonical and whoever is in charge of Mint development are always 6 months late with important updates like new kernels with added hardware support.
The damn Elantech touchpad is supported since kernel 3.12., too bad Mint is stuck with 3.11., so to make it working I had to manually install a newer kernel (version 3.13.9).
Download the following packages…

wget kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13.9-trusty/linux-headers-3.13.9-031309_3.13.9-031309.201404031554_all.deb
wget kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13.9-trusty/linux-headers-3.13.9-031309-generic_3.13.9-031309.201404031554_i386.deb
wget kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13.9-trusty/linux-image-3.13.9-031309-generic_3.13.9-031309.201404031554_i386.deb

…and run:

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.13.9*.deb linux-image-3.13.9*.deb

Then finally the touchpad can be managed using the utilities <em>synclient</em> and <em>xinput</em>.
What follows is the script I used to customize touchpad options:

#!/bin/bash

### IMPORTANT ##########################################################
# set acceleration and threshold #
xset m 2/1 0
### END IMPORTANT ######################################################

# edge vertical scrolling
xinput set-prop 12 "Synaptics Edge Scrolling" 1 0 0

# adjust area
xinput set-prop 12 "Synaptics Area" 0 0 0 1750

# set tap action - useless, tap already works on kernel 3.13.9
#xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Tap Action" 0 0 0 0 1 2 3

# set constant deceleration ratio
xinput set-prop 12 "Device Accel Constant Deceleration" 4

# set acceleration profile
xinput set-prop 12 "Device Accel Profile" 0

I still have to figure out how to be able to move the cursor while holding the left button but everything else is working fine (vertical and horizontal scrolling, two fingers scrolling and tap to left click).