Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Synaptics Touchpad on Ubuntu 6.06 - QSynaptics

After installing Ubuntu 6.06, the Synaptics touchpad on my HP zd7140us laptop seemed to be working perfectly. However, after a short while, I noticed some annoyingly odd behaviour. Usually when I was typing text in text box, The cursor would jump from where I was currently typing to where the mouse pointer was located (as if I had clicked the left mouse button). Not cool. Also, I wanted to take advantage of the touchpad's other features. After a brief web search, I found QSynaptics.

This is all I had to do

1. Install QSynaptics
sudo apt-get install qsynaptics


2. Edit the X11 config file to enable synclient
sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf


Add the line "Option SHMConfig on"

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


3. Restart X11, in a console type
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

Log back in to the console and type
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start


4. Fire up qsynaptics. Alt-f2, qsynaptics

Any settings changes are saved to ~/.qynaptics. In order to restrore these settings when gnome loads, add the command
qsynaptics -r
to System > Preference > Sessions > Startup Programs

Now whenever you logout or restart your QSynaptics settings will reload. The last step is to add a shortcut in the System > Preferences Menu so you can find QSynaptics months from now. To do this, right click on the System menu and select Edit Menus

Thursday, June 8, 2006

Testing blogger

This is a test of the blogger software system. Hosted remotely on the RideYourBike.org server.