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More than one way to skin a touchpad

A few days ago we got a nice view in to all the opinions and methods for dealing with tapping and the touchpad in Fedora 10.  Today I did an hour of work getting Jesse’s suggestion working.  In the end, the minimal ‘xorg.conf’ file was not enough.  I spent some time reading through the xorg.conf(5) manual page but could not resolve the syntax error I got when trying to start X with the minimal details.  I ended up copying in the ‘xorg.conf’ I saved/used in Fedora 8 and 9.  Not a hack I like, especially since it involved removing the hal files, obviousy a retro-action instead of Doing it the Right Way.

When I get another hour to break things, I’ll try out the comments that suggested working with the ‘.fdi’ file instead of ‘xorg.conf’.

As I should have expected, my post brought out the usual detractors of touchpads, those who I call “Fans of the Dipstick.”  As it happens, I really dislike the little thimble/dipstick/pointing stick design.  I’ve never been able to get it to drive right — my mouse actions look like a four-year-old trying to get the arrow just right to click on a button.  But, hey, to each her own, and all that.  I appreciate having both choices on my Thinkpad so I can use the dipstick on the rare occasion I am tweaking the touchpad settings.  I  just wish there was room to put a middle button below the touchpad, but I’m used to the stretch-n-paste by now.

For me, the touchpad is more intuitive, easier to control, and I really dig the side scrolling.  The touchpad provides a wider range of motion and interesting possibilities, such as the gestures.  But, hey, that’s just me.  Keep on stroking your dipstick and disabling your touchpad in BIOS, it’s all good.