Configuring a Touchpad
Many laptops use a Synaptics TouchPad (or an Alps GlidePoint, which can use the same driver). By default, a touchpad will emulate a PS/2 mouse, so it should work fine with the default driver, but if you use the Synaptics-specific driver, you can exquisitely fine-tune the touchpadâs extended features.
How Do I Do That?
You will need to manually edit the X server configuration file, /etc/X11/xorg.conf, to make two changes.
Tip
Itâs a good idea to get into the habit of making a backup of configuration files before modifying them, just in case something goes wrong:
# cp /etc/X11/Xorg.conf /etc/X11/Xorg.conf.backup
First, add an InputDevice
line to the ServerLayout
section:
Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Default Layout" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" InputDevice "TouchPad0" "AlwaysCore" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" EndSection
Next, add a new InputDevice
section (you can add this to any part of the file that is not between Section
and EndSection
lines):
Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Touchpad0" Driver "synaptics" Option "SHMConfig" "on" EndSection
When you restart the X server by restarting the system or pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (save any work first!), the Synaptics driver will be loaded with a default configuration that will permit you to:
Click the left mouse button by tapping one finger in the middle area or by tapping the upper-left corner.
Drag with the left mouse button by tapping and then dragging one finger (touch-release-touch, ...
Get Fedora Linux now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.