I have a brand-new Dell Inspiron N5110 laptop running OpenSuSE 12.1 (64-bit). The touchpad isn’t recognized as a touchpad, but as a regular mouse. While I understand that this is due to a bug in kernel versions < 3.3, and will be fixed when OpenSuSE 12.2 comes out, I need to find a way to disable it in the meantime since it interferes with my typing. Normally, I set up synaptic to disable the touchpad while I’m typing, but since that isn’t an option and I have an external mouse, I’d just like to disable it altogether – I’ve been searching around, but can’t find any clear instructions.
On Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:36:03 +0000, nthread wrote:
> Does anyone know how to do this?
Upgrade your kernel to the latest version - there was a bug in the 12.1
shipping kernel that caused the touchpad to be recognized as a mouse
rather than as a touchpad.
I have an N7110 and it had the exact same problem.
3.1.10-1.16-desktop
This is the kernel I’m running and it works properly.
Make sure you have the package “gsynaptics” This is the GUI for touch pad controls. This pkg should disable the touch pad when any other pointing device is detected.
I can say that it does not in 12.2. I had this problem many revs back. I had found a program that would disable the touchpad for a delay of x milliseconds while typing. That is the last I have had of this problem. It is back with 12.2. I use a bluetooth mouse, and I keep hitting the touchpad while typing and sending it off somewhere else. VERY annoying. I do not see an option in the synaptics page to disable touchpad while typing for x seconds. is this an oversite? If not, it should be added. Digging around I found that by typing ‘syndaemon -d’ at the bash prompt disables it for 2 seconds. adding a -i 1, 1 second. Only problem I don’t have a .xinit file anymore, so not sure where to put it. Would love to see this added as part of a “laptop” install, since nearly all laptops have a touchpad now.