I am getting used to KDE 5 (5.18.0) in kubuntu 16.04. I'm happy with most of it except that everything scrolls.

I have a Toshiba notebook with an ETPS/2 Elantech touchpad. When I touch it near the right side with one finger or anywhere with two fingers, whatever has the focus tries to scroll. This can be nice in applications like a browser, Kate, or konsole, but drives me crazy with the pager widget in my panel. Even in Kate, I sometimes have difficulty moving the cursor because it starts scrolling rather than just moving the cursor.

Once I select a desktop using the pager widget in my panel, it is very difficult for me to move the cursor from the pager to the new desktop without starting scrolling desktops. If I start near the border between two or more desktops in the pager (I have two rows of 4 desktops), The pager can wildly switch among desktops while I'm just trying to get out of the pager. It's extremely frustrating - maybe enough to get me to leave KDE after at least 14 years.

I like being able to scroll using the touchpad sometimes, but I need to make some things - like the pager - never scroll.

TL;DR:
Is there any way to get some control of what scrolls - other than just turning scrolling off completely? Ideally, I would like scrolling to be disabled unless I am holding down a key like Ctrl, Alt, or Super.

This would be a minor annoyance, but my two smallest fingers on my (dominant) right hand are partially numb and I don't always feel them touching the touchpad until it's too late.

I don't use a mouse because I'm tall and don't have a desk to put one on where it would be comfortable to reach. I have tried a wireless trackball - which is better, but haven't worked out where to physically put that either.

I took a look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21541140/linux-emulate-scrolling-using-mouse-plus-keyboard-modifier, but don't know enough to get it to work.