How do you disable your synaptic trackpad in Ubuntu

[gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

I'm running Karmic, and my Preferences/Mouse has a touchpad panel with
things like "Disable touchpad while typing". There is not a way to
actually disable the touchpad. You could start gpointing-device-settings
from a script. Additionally gpointing-device-settings shows up under the
System/preferences/touchpad.=20
I just went to System/preferences/touchpad, unclicked the Enable
Touchpad, rebooted, and the touchpad is disabled on reboot.

I do agree that a lot of configuration text files that we old Unix guys
are used to are no longer around. I'm not sure where
gpointing-device-settings keeps its data but it certainly is a per user
configuration. I turned off the touchpad in my user and logged in as
another user. Once I logged out the touchpad was reactivated.

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 i=
t
> no longer lets you disable the trackpad, which constantly makes the
> cursor jump while I'm typing due to my monstrous hands.  Ideally I woul=
d
> like it to default to off, but have the ability to reenable it on deman=
d.
>
> 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 th=
e
> favor of "The software knows what to do" (isn't that how we got Windows=
?).
>  =20

--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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