Solving touchpad tapping issues

[Alexandra]

My Toshiba NB510 netbook comes with a generic "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad". Upon installation of WattOS R8 32bit (LXDE version), tapping was not registered by my touchpad. Two-finger scroll and moving the cursor worked, however.

I made sure that tapping was enabled in gpointing-device-settings. However, it didn't do the trick. I solved this issue by realizing that the synaptics driver had one-finger tapping disabled by default (at least in the case of my touchpad).

I'm writing this short HowTo for folks who might be in the same situation.

If you don't know what touchpad you have, install and run xinput:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo apt-get install xinput
$ xinput

You should be getting something like this:

Code: [Select]

...
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad              id=13 [slave  pointer  (2)]
...

synclient configures touchpad behaviour. Checking tapping-related settings:

Code: [Select]

$ synclient | grep -i tap
    MaxTapTime              = 180
    MaxTapMove              = 243
    MaxDoubleTapTime        = 180
    SingleTapTimeout        = 180
    FastTaps                = 0
    TapButton1              = 0
    TapButton2              = 0
    TapButton3              = 0
    TapAndDragGesture       = 1
What TapButtons do is signify how many fingers are taken into account when a tapping event is registered. So TapButton1 represents a one-finger tap, TapButton2 represents a two-finger tap and TapButton3 represents a three-finger tap. The values of the TapButton options represent which mouse button is reported as being pressed when a one-, two- or three-finger tap is registered. Number codes assigned to mouse buttons can be checked with xev, however they are generally 1 for the left mouse button, 2 for middle mouse button and 3 for right one.

So enabling one-finger taps acting as a left click means setting TapButton1 to 1:

Code: [Select]

$ synclient TapButton1=1
Making this change permanent requires adding this option to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf. If you don't have this file, create it first:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
Now edit it, remove what isn't necessary and add the desired options to the "InputClass" section for identifier "touchpad catchall".

Here is how my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf looks like:

Code: [Select]

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Option "TapButton1" "1"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad ignore duplicates"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchOS "Linux"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/mouse*"
        Option "Ignore" "on"
EndSection

Then reboot and the new setting should take effect automatically.