[plug] Is it possible to disable trackpad on laptop?

[Gavin Chester]

On Sun, 2007-11-18 at 10:40 +0900, Richard Meyer wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-11-18 at 09:58 +0900, Mike Holland wrote:
> > David Buddrige wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > > 
> > > I run Ubuntu on my laptop, but a constant annoyance is the trackpad.  
> > 
> > My old compaq had a hard button to disable the touchpad - very useful!
> > 
> > If you google "touchpad" rather than trackpad, you'll find plenty.
> > (Assuming you have the usual Synaptics one.)
> > 
> > I don't know of any way to do this in the Ubuntu GUI, so you'll need
> > to edit.
> > 
> > cheers, Mike
> > 
> 
> You could try blacklisting the Synaptics driver, or remove the driver
> entry from the X config file.
> 
> Whether either of those will actually WORK, I can't say.

It _can_ be annoying, but if you have given up retraining yourself to
stop the offending accidental finger action then there are at least two
options:
1/ take a look at this utility
<http://www.matteolucarelli.net/flsynclient/index_en.htm>
2/ do as Richard suggests. I see an entry enabling the synaptics driver
in bootup messages so you have to put a stop to that.

All I know is that in my opensuse system I can be lazy and use yast to
invoke sax to tell X that I want only a simple two-button mouse
emulation rather than hand-editing X conf ;-)

Gavin