Configure a Touchpad

Configure a Touchpad

Configure the special functions of your laptop touchpad and start tapping like crazy.

Most laptops today include a touchpad as a method of controlling the mouse pointer. These touchpads have various configuration options that most people aren't even aware of. Here's how to get all these advanced features working under Linux.

Ubuntu includes the synaptics mouse driver by default, and if your laptop's touchpad is detected during installation, it will be automatically installed and configured. The stock touchpad configuration will include some advanced features like double-finger tap support for middle-clicks and using the right side of the touchpad to do vertical scrolling. To really tweak your touchpad configuration, though, you must make a small edit to your X11 configuration, restart the GUI, and install a configuration program.

Preparing Your X11 Configuration

In order to use the configuration program for your touchpad, first you must edit the X11 configuration to add a directive to enable shared memory in the Xserver. If you're fairly new to Linux, we suggest you use the nano editor; otherwise, use the editor of your choice.

The permissions on the X11 configuration are restricted, so you need to make this change using sudo.

Back up the configuration file first:

bill@lexington:~$ sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old
            

Then edit the file:

bill@lexington:~$ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
            

Once you get the file open, you should see a section pertaining to the touchpad. It may look like this:

Section "InputDevice" 
   Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad" 
   Driver          "synaptics" 
   Option          "SendCoreEvents"      "true" 
   Option          "Device"              "/dev/psaux" 
   Option          "Protocol"            "auto-dev" 
   Option          "HorizScrollDelta"    "0" 
EndSection

You'll need to add a line in that section of the file (before the EndSection line) with the SHMConfig option set to on (this will allow you to use the GUI client to make changes without restarting the Xorg server). Here is a sample snippet after editing:

Section "InputDevice" 
   Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad" 
   Driver          "synaptics" 
   Option          "SendCoreEvents"      "true" 
   Option          "Device"              "/dev/psaux" 
   Option          "Protocol"            "auto-dev" 
   Option          "HorizScrollDelta"    "0" 
   Option          "SHMConfig"           "on" 
EndSection

At this point, save the file and reboot your system (or log out, switch to a console with Ctrl-Alt-F1, log in, and run the command sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart) to load the new X11 configuration. The GUI should come up as usual. If there was a problem, to get your GUI back, simply log in at the command prompt and run the following command:

bill@lexington:~$ sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old /etc/X11/xorg.conf
            

Assuming that your configuration works, you should now install the configuration program for the touchpad: qsynaptics.

Installing qsynaptics

Much like any other software installation, qsynaptics can be installed by using apt-get or aptitude from a terminal:

bill@lexington:~$ sudo aptitude install qsynaptics
            

Configuring the Touchpad with QSynaptics

QSynaptics is a graphical program, so it can be run from within the GNOME desktop. To start it, launch a terminal and run qsynaptics. The QSynaptics dialog will appear (see Figure). The General tab lets you enable or disable the extended features of the Synaptics touchpad driver.

QSynaptics at launch

The Scrolling tab (see Figure) lets you adjust the scrolling behavior. You can adjust the sensitivity of the scroll area, enable horizontal scrolling, and even change the scrolling motion from an up-and-down swipe to a circular gesture on the touchpad.

Scrolling methods

Tapping gestures are configured on the Tapping tab, shown in Figure. You can disable tapping altogether, insert a tap-disabling delay after any keyboard press, and create tap gestures for one-, two-, or three-finger taps.

Playing with tap settings

Once you spend some time adjusting your trackpad for your particular needs, you'll wonder how you lived without this flexibility. It's great to be able to turn on new features or disable features you may find annoying.