Is there a way to turn off the tapping on a laptop trackpad from somewhere in the kde control panels? I am constantly, accidentally bumping the trackpad with my thumbs while typing which is triggering lots of nasty things. This feature certainly exists in gnome (ubuntu) but I am having trouble finding it in the KDE environment.

Thanks.

Unfortunately, I don't know if there's a KDE GUI interface, but I've always manually disabled it in xorg.conf.

If you want to disable all the special features, you can just add the following to the InputDevice section:

Code: Select all

   Option      "TouchpadOff" "2"

If there are some features that you do want, you have to disable some stuff yourself.

Here's my InputDevice section:

Code: Select all

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier   "Touchpad"
   Driver      "synaptics"
   Option      "SendCoreEvents" "true"
   Option      "Protocol" "auto-dev"
   Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
   Option          "SHMConfig" "on"
   Option      "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
   Option          "VertEdgeScroll" "0"
   Option      "VertScrollDelta" "200"
   Option      "TapButton1" "0"
   Option          "TapButton2" "0"
   Option          "TapButton3" "0"
   Option      "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
EndSection


I just disabled anything that looked like it might do something I don't want and only enabled the vertical two-finger scroll.

If you don't want to mess around with global settings, try the "synclient" utility (actually, "synclient -l" is where I got the list of my settings from) and maybe add a little script to the Autostart directory. It works like this:

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synclient TapButton1=0


(as I said, "synclient -l" lets you see you all your current settings)
The only catch is that you have to have Option "SHMConfig" "on" for it to work (see my xorg.conf section above).

Hope that helps!

Thanks - happy to hack the xorg.conf but disappointed there is no option for this in the system settings. It is one of the first things I look for with laptops and I was very pleased to find it in an easily discoverable place in gnome.

unfortunately i get:
synclient -l
Can't access shared memory area. SHMConfig disabled?

but I added the required options to xconf and will try it out later.

Might be the wrong forum but I notice some vendors have started implementing other scrolling methods that use, for example, hot spots on the track-pad to operate the up and down scroll buttons (as an alternative to two finger methods).

andre_orwell wrote:Thanks - happy to hack the xorg.conf but disappointed there is no option for this in the system settings. It is one of the first things I look for with laptops and I was very pleased to find it in an easily discoverable place in gnome.

As I said, I really don't know if there's a GUI version for that - I don't imagine making a frontend for synclient too hard. I haven't looked it up because I don't switch laptops too often, so if I can find a fix, I just do it and forget about it. And, being a Gentoo user for many years, I have no fear of command-line utilities or files inside my /etc directory :shade:

andre_orwell wrote:unfortunately i get:
synclient -l
Can't access shared memory area. SHMConfig disabled?

but I added the required options to xconf and will try it out later.

Yep, as soon as you restart X, it should start working.

andre_orwell wrote:Might be the wrong forum but I notice some vendors have started implementing other scrolling methods that use, for example, hot spots on the track-pad to operate the up and down scroll buttons (as an alternative to two finger methods).

Hmm... I actually hate those just as much as tapping because it causes my pages to scroll randomly, so I disable them as well. But when I found out that Synaptics can detect how many fingers I use, I was really excited. Since I always use one finger to move the pointer, the two finger scroll does not get in the way, and I find it very useful.

Alec wrote:Unfortunately, I don't know if there's a KDE GUI interface, but I've always manually disabled it in xorg.conf.

If you want to disable all the special features, you can just add the following to the InputDevice section:

Code: Select all

   Option      "TouchpadOff" "2"

If there are some features that you do want, you have to disable some stuff yourself.

Here's my InputDevice section:

Code: Select all

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier   "Touchpad"
   Driver      "synaptics"
   Option      "SendCoreEvents" "true"
   Option      "Protocol" "auto-dev"
   Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
   Option          "SHMConfig" "on"
   Option      "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
   Option          "VertEdgeScroll" "0"
   Option      "VertScrollDelta" "200"
   Option      "TapButton1" "0"
   Option          "TapButton2" "0"
   Option          "TapButton3" "0"
   Option      "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
EndSection


I just disabled anything that looked like it might do something I don't want and only enabled the vertical two-finger scroll.


Hope that helps!

I would like to disable the touchpad taps only, for all users, on Kubuntu 8.10 running on a Dell Vostro 1000 with a Synaptics touchpad. If I understand your post, since there is no KDE GUI to change the touchpad settings, one may simply edit the xorg.conf file such that the appropriate option entry in the InputDevice section is edited, e.g.,

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   Option   "TapButton1" "0"


Is this understanding correct? If so, what is the correct option entry to only disable the tapping? Thanks

You could install Qsynaptics if you want a Qt interface: http://qsynaptics.sourceforge.net/

EDIT
It is now called touchfreeze, and it may well be in your distro's repos
I checked, and gsynaptics can be installed without hardly any gnome dependency as well.

roadracer wrote:

Code: Select all

   Option   "TapButton1" "0"


Is this understanding correct? If so, what is the correct option entry to only disable the tapping? Thanks

Yes, except I would also disable TapButton2 and TapButton3 as well.