Certain multi-touch capable touchpads on notebooks behave erratically under Ubuntu (and perhaps other flavors of Linux). Here’s a simple solution to solve that, at least for Synaptics-based hardware:
This has been tested on Ubuntu 10.10, but it may work on other versions.
- Launch Terminal (Applications – Accessories – Terminal), then run the following two commands (add utouch repository and install Synaptics driver).
- sudo add-apt-repository ppa:utouch-team/utouch
- sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install synaptics-dkms
- Restart the system.
- Open System – Preferences – Mouse, and enable “two-finger scrolling” in the touchpad tab.
You will now have a touchpad that behaves itself, and you’ll also notice that two-finger scrolling is also available! Note that for the touchpads that have integrated buttons (like some HP and Apple models), this will not enable right click. However, in the Mouse configuration menu, you can enable right click via press-and-hold delay. Shorten it, then right-clicking will work when you hold the button down.
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