Synaptics TouchPad driver for X

Synaptics TouchPad driver for XOrg/XFree86

This is a driver for all synaptics touchpads for X.org/Xfree86 4.x. The driver is not written portably; it will not work on operating systems other than Linux and FreeBSD (by ports).

Features

• Movement with adjustable, non-linear acceleration and speed
• Button events through short touching of the touchpad
• Dragging through short touching and holding down the finger on the touchpad
• Middle and right button events on the upper and lower corner of the touchpad
• Vertical scrolling (button four and five events) through moving the finger on the right side of the touchpad
• Horizontal scrolling (button six and seven events) through moving the finger on the lower side of the touchpad
• Adjustable finger detection

Disabling under XOrg

To disable the TouchPad, but leaving the trackpoint functional, you need to modify your /etc/X11/xorg.conf

To the InputDevice section, for the mouse with the "synaptics" driver add Option "TouchpadOff" "1"

eg

...
Section "InputDevice"
       ...
       Driver      "synaptics"
       ...
       Option      "TouchpadOff" "1"
       ...
EndSection
...

Another method is in a terminal with the tool synclient:

synclient TouchpadOff=1

or, to turn it back on:

synclient TouchpadOff=0

The most comfortable way is ksynaptics under KDE control center. It supports smart typing recognition, circular scrolling and many more.

For Gnome users there is gsynaptics (Homepage).

Project Homepage

Synaptics TouchPad driver for XOrg/XFree86