How do you disable your synaptic trackpad in Ubuntu

[me-5yx05kfkO/aqeI1yJSURBw at public.gmane.org (Matthew Gillen)]

On 02/11/2010 10:30 AM, David Kramer wrote:
> One of the many issues I had upgrading to Karmic (I'm working on a
> comprehensive list) what the mouse configuration tool that comes with it
> no longer lets you disable the trackpad, which constantly makes the
> cursor jump while I'm typing due to my monstrous hands.  Ideally I would
> like it to default to off, but have the ability to reenable it on demand.
> 
> I have tried TouchFreeze, and it doesn't actually disable the trackpad.
>  I also tried gpointing-device-settings, which actually works, but it's
> a GUI program I have to run from the command line, and the setting
> doesn't persist reboots, so I have to run it from the command line and
> choose the right options every time I reboot.
> 
> I will skip (for now) my rant on how all of the tried and true config
> files everyone knows and understands are being taken away from us in the
> favor of "The software knows what to do" (isn't that how we got Windows?).
> 
> Is there a better way?  Thanks.

You could always try to figure out what driver it's using and blacklist it
(either via the kernel command line with rdblacklist=driverName, or the
modprobe.d configuration)...  That wouldn't be ideal in that you couldn't
re-enable it on demand.

HTH,
Matt