Touchpad clicks way too sensitive

[royrules22]

Hi,

The touchpad on my laptop is just way too sensitive. Whenever I'm typing my thumb usually hovers over it and it occasionally touches the touchpad. Such a small touch usually ends up being a click and totally ruins what I type or at best kills the momentum. Also I cant really use the touchpad as a mouse since it ends up clicking everything I go over. Is there any way I can make the clicks less sensitive or atleast turn off the damn touch clicking..?

[royrules22]

bump

[royrules22]

Originally Posted by royrules22 bump

..

[mojoman]

Originally Posted by royrules22 Hi, The touchpad on my laptop is just way too sensitive. Whenever I'm typing my thumb usually hovers over it and it occasionally touches the touchpad. Such a small touch usually ends up being a click and totally ruins what I type or at best kills the momentum. Also I cant really use the touchpad as a mouse since it ends up clicking everything I go over. Is there any way I can make the clicks less sensitive or atleast turn off the damn touch clicking..?

I *think* you can adjust this by editing your xorg.conf but the configuration probably depends on what touchpad you have. I had to tweak my touchpad (using synaptics) in order to give it a workable speed (its default was *really* slow on Debian Etch). Now, the synaptics touchpad have parameters called "FingerLow" and "FingerHigh" which are given as integer (in plain english I think integer would translate to a numeric value but hey, I from Sweden, what do I know?). This determines the amount of pressure needed for a touch to count as a click. I believe there's also an option to turn off the click-funtion on the touchpad. I've never needed to bother with this specific setting so I can't give you any values but trial and error shouldn't take to long, once you know where to tweak.

If you have a touchpad supported by synaptics make sure you have the correct driver installed (it's called "xserver-xorg-input-synaptics"). There are also graphical configuration tools, e.g. ksynaptics or qsynaptics for KDE and Gnome but I've never used them so I can't say if they'll adjust touch sensitivity as well. A search,

apt-cache search synaptics

will get you a list of synaptics packages. Also,

man synaptics

will give you a fairly good explanation of the parameters and options.

If this doesn't help post back with some more info and I'll see what I can come up with.

Best regards
/Mojoman

[mojoman]

BTW, have a look at these threads as well:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=332035

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...light=touchpad

(especially post #2 on the last thread).

/mojoman

[royrules22]

Ok I installed gsynaptics, and it gave me this error:

""GSynaptics couldn't initialize.
You have to set 'SHMConfig' 'true' in xorg.conf or XF86Config to use GSynaptics"

I followed the instruction in the second thread you linked to:

Originally Posted by Carlos Santiago Yes you must do it. To edit it, type: sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf then just add Option 'SHMConfig' 'true' inside the section synaptics.

However my xorg.conf doesn't have a synaptic section! What to do?

[5-HT]

Originally Posted by royrules22 bump

The section itself should be 'InputDevice' (one of many). Do you have anything similar in your xorg.conf? Also, do you know if it is a Synaptics touchpad?

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "Synaptics Touchpad"
    Driver        "synaptics"
    .....

[royrules22]

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Generic Keyboard"
	Driver      "kbd"
	Option	    "CoreKeyboard"
	Option	    "XkbRules" "xorg"
	Option	    "XkbModel" "pc105"
	Option	    "XkbLayout" "us"
	Option	    "XkbOptions" "lv3:ralt_switch"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Configured Mouse"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "CorePointer"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
	Option	    "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

                                                      # /dev/input/event
                                                      # for USB
	Identifier  "stylus"
	Driver      "wacom"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/wacom"          # Change to 
	Option	    "Type" "stylus"
	Option	    "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"               # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

                                                      # /dev/input/event
                                                      # for USB
	Identifier  "eraser"
	Driver      "wacom"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/wacom"          # Change to 
	Option	    "Type" "eraser"
	Option	    "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"               # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

                                                      # /dev/input/event
                                                      # for USB
	Identifier  "cursor"
	Driver      "wacom"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/wacom"          # Change to 
	Option	    "Type" "cursor"
	Option	    "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"               # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

I have a WACOM tablet I use and a Bluetooth mouse FYI.

How do I find out if my touchpad really is Synaptics?

[mojoman]

I did an

apt-cache search touchpad

abd the only driver it came up with is the synaptics driver. I'm not sure there are other drivers but I may very well be wrong here. Maybe some else can give some info on this?

Anyway, this is how an autogenerated section of a xorg.conf used for a toshiba laptop running on Debian etch looks like (this is how it looked before I started to tweak it, it was *really* slow on etch)

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

You could try adding this section, together with the SMHConfig option as well. If it works, well, you can start adding the options I recommended earlier on and see if that solves the problem. If not, it's easy enough to remove. But I find it strange that you don't have any section referring to your touchpad. Is your current xorg.conf autogenerated?

/mojoman

[Rodtwister]

I had the very same problem you have posted here (no synaptis Input Dev Section) I luckily solved it last night. I removed "xserver-xorg-input-synaptics" using Adept then I installed it (xserver-xorg............) again with Adept from the same Ubuntu 6.06 CD. It even told me there was another exact copy in another sub channel (whatever that means) After install was done I had the missing Section in "xorg.conf" Then I could do the things stated in this thread and other places. Problem solved. Maybe I can use Linux now. Well still have laptop winmodem problem, we'll see.