Most of the time the “Fn” + “key”s are not functioning in Linux.(Well.. its not working for me, even though I have installed Omnibook module for Toshiba laptops ).So the touch pad is always turned on and it’s a real headache if you are doing lot of coding stuff.
I found a method to disable the touchpad using ‘xserver-xorg-input-synaptics’ kernel module.
First you have to install ‘xserver-xorg-input-synaptics’ .In Debian based system its
apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
Then you have to edit your xorg.conf file.
Add a new “InputDevice” section, in addition to the section for your mouse.
Section “InputDevice”
Driver “synaptics”
Identifier “Mouse[1]”
Option “Device” “/dev/psaux”
Option “Protocol” “autodev”
Option “SHMConfig” “on”
EndSection
And in the “ServerLayout” section add an entry for the new synaptic touchpad like, and for your primary mouse (in my case – Configured mouse) add the option “CorePointer”.
Section “ServerLayout”
InputDevice “Mouse[1]” “AlwaysCore”
InputDevice “Configured mouse” “CorePointer”
.
.
EndSection
Then restart the X server and type the command ‘synclient TouchPadOff=1’ , WOILA..your touchpad is now disabled. If you play with ‘synclient’ command , you can notice that there’s many settings for the touchpad. I am writing a small python GTK proggie, visit here soon to download it.
Ashika learns to blog 