I have a Toshiba Satellite 105a-S2081 I recently installed Ubuntu 6.10. Everything runs great except the mouse pad the only thing it will do is move and left click by tapping. (buttons do not work, they never have) When I had windows on the machine I had it set up to when I tapped in the lower right hand corner it gave me the context menu (right click), but I can't figure out for the life of me how to get this to work on linux. I can't find any settings for this, I found mouse settings but not for a mouse pad.
I have tried plugging in a regular mouse and it works fine for about a minute then it quits working totally (strange).
Before anyone answers this post please keep in mind that I have never used linux before so I am as noob as you can get. So please be as clear as possible. I am sick of windows and microsoft and I really want this to work so any help with this would greatly appreciated.

Thank You in advance

If your touchpad is "synaptics" pad (it's common), you can install a package called "gsynaptics" to configure it.

http://gsynaptics.sourceforge.jp/

This should be available at least in the "universe" repository. To see how to add that repository, check here:
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_E...a_repositories

Once universe is enabled, start a terminal (Applications>Accessories>Terminal), and type
sudo apt-get install gsynaptics

Once it's installed, run "gsynaptics" from terminal, or check your menus if it has appeared there somewhere.

I found the package you were talking about and installed it (thank you). it placed an icon in my preferences menu but when i try to open it, it says I have to set "SHMConfig" to "true" in xorg.conf. I think I have figured this out, (I'm assuming I need to add SHMConfig to the xorg.conf file) but I can't save the file because it's read only, so I got my usb mouse working long enough to make the file read and write but it says I don't have permissions to do this. so i can't save the new xorg.conf file. not having right click capabilities is making all this very difficult as well.
as stated before this is my first try at linux and i know how annoying these dumb questions prolly are but please bare with me.

Even if I could get my external usb mouse to work all the time that would be great.

ok. You can always write on a file if you are in the "root" mode. You can do this with "sudo" command. Then it asks for password.
For example with xorg.conf, write

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

it then asks for password. And you will be able to save files.

I recommend reading around the Ubuntuguide link in my previous post. It's an excellent source of help for all kinds of problems. Ubuntu forums are also helpful.

Good luck!

Thank you for your patience I'll give it a shot. again thank you