Mouse and Touchpad Happiness For Linux

Hey! Enki has moved his blog to Armyofevilrobots.com. Check it out after you are done here. This page is going nowhere though...

While I am hopelessly in love with my new (work supplied) Asus Laptop, I am also extremely annoyed by the bad manners exhibited by it's touch pad. I honestly think that these things were designed to only be used by people who hunt and peck. Anybody who tries to type properly inevitably smears their thumbs on the pad, changing/launching windows, and generally makes life hard for themselves.

I was disappointed to find out that X/Linux does not automagically turn of the touchpad when a mouse is plugged in. Lame. The solution? Mouse detection and configuration mangling when X starts.

First thing you have to do is get your XF86Config on. If you already have X working with either mouse,then skip this step, otherwise, change the XF86 lines below...

To get the USB mouse up, enter this command inside of Section "ServerLayout"

        InputDevice    "USB Mouse" "CorePointer"

and then add these lines below the keyboard input device:

#Touchpad
Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Touchpad Mouse"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "Protocol" "Auto"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/mouse"
EndSection
 
# USB-Mouse
Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier      "USB Mouse"
   Driver          "mouse"
   Option          "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
   #Option          "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
   #Option      "Protocol" "Auto"
   Option          "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
   Option          "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
  Option      "Resolution" "1200"
EndSection

Copy this file to XF86Config.nopad in the /etc/X11/ dir.
Now edit the file again and change the line:

        InputDevice    "USB Mouse" "CorePointer"

to read instead:

        InputDevice    "Touchpad Mouse" "CorePointer"
        InputDevice    "USB Mouse" "SendCoreEvents"

Save this file as XF86Config.both in the same directory. Now open your favourite editor and paste in the following script, and save it in your /usr/bin directory...

#!/bin/bash
 if [ -e "/dev/input/mouse0" ]; then
        echo "Found USB mouse. Deactivating pad."
        cp /etc/X11/XF86Config.nopad /etc/X11/XF86Config
else
        echo "No USB mouse. Pad and USB mouse both active."
        echo "Restart X to use mouse only."
        cp /etc/X11/XF86Config.both /etc/X11/XF86Config
fi 
gdm

I know, I know. Ugly hack, but it took all of five minutes, and it works. X will disable the trackpad if you have a USB mouse installed. This does NOT work if you have a second PS/2 mouse. You must also make sure that USB mouse support, and either UHCI or OHCI is active on your computer (already done on RedHat, easy to change in Gentoo).

Note: You may find that your scroll wheel mapping sucks ass. Check this big ass scroll mouse site for more details.

Posted by Enki at August 8, 2003 07:41 PM | TrackBack