Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

[adamsjw2]

Hi all,
I need to change some settings for my touchpad on my Dell Inspiron 6000, but I can't find a utility to do that.
TIA,
Jim A.

[SheeEttin]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

You probably want the ksynaptics package.

[phil_saunders]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

Thanx for the advice SheeEttin.

I have installed ksynaptics but when I try to access it from

system settings > keyboard and mouse

I get the message

Shared Memory is not accessible.

Please add the option 'SHMConfig "on"' into the touch pad section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Do I really need to edit this file or am I doing something wrong?

[SheeEttin]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

I'd trust the error message. Try it.

[MoonRise]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

Don't know if you've done that yet or not, but here is that section from my xorg.conf file:

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

[phil_saunders]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

Hi.

Got it to work which is great as I can disable the touchpad mouse clicking thing.

Trouble is, I still can't speed up the mouse pointer speed.

I have to "swipe" 5 times to get the pointer from one side of the screen to the other.

Any suggestions?

[MoonRise]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

Sorry. I use ksynaptics to actually disable my touchpad all together.

[SheeEttin]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

Isn't there an option in ksynaptics somewhere? I highly doubt there isn't... (I don't have a touchpad myself.)

[phil_saunders]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

There's a "sensitivity" option in Synaptics and there's a "Pointer acceleration" option in system settings > keyboard and mouse > mouse > advanced.

Neither of these affect the pointer speed (at all).

It's driving me mad. It's sooo slow!

(I'm using a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop BTW)

[SheeEttin]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

Really? Huh. I honestly can't say, because I don't use it myself.
Are there no other settings you can tweak?

[klerfayt]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

probably not that useful, but type

man:/synaptics

in your konqueror location bar

[adamsjw2]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

Phil,
Same problem here about moving the mouse pointer. I can't get the touchpad borders function to work in ksynaptics. I think I might uninstall ksynaptics and go back to the feisty default settings. My original problem was that the touchpad was too darn sensitive. if I used to much pressure to move the mouse, it would "click." I didn't have any of these problems with Efty Edge. But, all of the pluses with feisty don't outweigh this problem.

[SheeEttin]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

Efty Edge? Heh. It's actually Edgy Eft, but whatever.

[phil_saunders]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

Still got the problem...

Mouse pointer painfully slow - 5 "swipes" to move from one side of the screen to the other.

Anyone got any ideas or know anyone who could help?

[adamsjw2]

Re: Tweaking Synaptic Touchpad

I finally uninstalled ksynaptics. It kept getting more flakey by the minute.
Jim A.