What is "qsynaptics" and "synaptics?"
 

Hey folks,

So, I have ubuntu running on a laptop and ever since I started I wanted better touchpad control. The device is a synaptics device. I found somewhere a project called qsynaptics which, I presume, is a GUI interface to the synclient. It works well. I use it to turn off tapping.

But... there is one problem.

Whenever I reboot, I need to relaunch qsynaptics, turn tapping _ON_, because the GUI says it's off, apply those settings, then turn them back off and reapply.

I am presuming this is because of settings in the x conf file? Here's the relevant section:

(Note: The SHMConfig option was set to support qsynaptics.)

Why is it that tapping comes back on whenever I restart X? Since all I really want to do is disabling tapping, would it be easier to alter xorg.conf as such? (Found on Ubuntuforums.)

I'm pretty sure that would solve the underlying goal -- to turn off taps. But I would like to know why I have to fiddle with qsynaptics to get tapping off after x is relaunched.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Mike Whalen

When synaptics driver is being loaded it has to initialize settings. It can take them from defaults (tapping is on!), but xorg.conf can override (but doesn't). Options set SHMConfig is not by default saved anywhere. qsynaptics cannot alter /etc/xorg.conf because of permissions. Seems like it is generally a bit buggy.. So use the solution from Ubuntu forums - it seems to be right (I would try to add 'Option "TouchpadOff" "1"' instead, but I never checked it in xorg.conf - only with synclient).

Well, for what it's worth, if I watch the output from qynaptics, it's setting TouchpadOff to 1 when it turns off taps. I was wondering if I could add that to xorg to turn tapping off by default... I'll try it and see what happens!

Thanks!

Cheers,

Mike...