Touchpads
 

What is it with the new release of Zenwalk (and I supose Slackware) that the touchpad all of a sudden does not "tap and grab" as it used to. Is it something to do with Synaptics? Is this a new thing? There is also something called "evdev". Is this an alternative. If there are "No synaptic drivers" does one then have to go with endev to get the touchpad fully functional.
Does anyone have some light to throw on this subject? WOuld be much appreciated.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As of Slackware-13.37 HAL is no longer responsible for the inputdevices in X.

You'll have to look into the directory /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ there are several files which you can copy into the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ directory. Edit the files (they are selfexplaining) and then after restarting the X-server your new settings should be available.

In your case (for the touchpad) you should configure the "50-synaptics.conf" file.

Markus

Ah yes and thanks for your reply!
At the moment I have the synaptics option in place however my touchpad does not tap and grab to move or resize a window. Also the command #synclient -l tells me that "there are no synaptic drivers loaded."
Should these drivers come with the distro? OR should I try the evdev option? My laptop is a 5yr old Tosh Satellite which I 'believe' has a synaptics touchpad.
Can you help on this one?

I should also add that I have added the line:
Option "TapAndDragGesture" "Yes"
to the file in the section "InputClass"

Hi,

Not sure if this will be off any assistance but I just installed kcm_touchpad from slackbuild.org and it gives many configuration options for Touchpads...


Regards
Neil

I had such problems with my Lenovo Thinkpad due to hardware-problems, the errormessage was that no synaptics-drivers are loaded (on both Windows and Linux).

With the commandyou can find out which kernelmoduel is in use for the hardware-devices. It is clear that the appropriate module has to be loaded to get the device working. You can try any Live-CD, Ubuntu or Mint, they have many drivers and if it works with a live-CD, you may with the "lspci -k" command find out which driver they use.

Markus

Is it a clickpad?

Brian

Its an ordinary square pad with two buttons at the lower edge.

No problems here on my T42 with slack 13.37.

If I do a #locate synaptics then it shows me various files that could be modules in the xorg and also src directories. Can I use these?
If so is there a "How to" written up about how to install new kernel modules?

Thanks markush! It solved my problem with touchpad on Dell xps l501x.

To be precise I added those lines to synaptic file:

Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "on"
Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "on"
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "on"

Thanks again.