Touchpad options not available in system settings

[quiddity]

I'm running Kubuntu 14.04 on a Dell Inspiron 1501. I'd like to change some of the touchpad settings -- specifically, to disable tap-to-click. When I go to system settings>input devices>touchpad, a red bar at the top tells me "Synaptics driver is not installed (or is not used)" and all the options are greyed out.

Reading around, I've learned that the synaptics driver for touchpads is no longer used/maintained in 14.04. But it seems that not using it means that I can't change any touchpad settings. That's not right! Any suggestions? Install the old driver and hope it works?

Here, in case, it helps, is the output of xinput list:

⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ PS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]

[SteveRiley]

Look in the file /var/log/Xorg.0.log. Do you see any references to synaptics?

[Worzel]

Thsi has worked for me over the last few Kubuntu releases -

As root, open /etc/default/grub in an editor of your choice.

Find the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" - change it to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.noloop" and save it.

sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

It's just my touchpad working again on a new install of 14-10

Jim

[Guest]

As root, open /etc/default/grub in an editor of your choice.

Find the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" - change it to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.noloop" and save it.

sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

It's just my touchpad working again on a new install of 14-10

Jim

Thanks for this solution it helped me to resolve my touchpad problem.