Saturday, April 25, 2009

Disabling Trackpad while typing in Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty)

So I just upgraded my laptop to the official release of Ubuntu 9.04 and I was annoyed that the trackpad wasn't disabled automatically when typing (why this isn't just done in the hardware I don't know), but after piecing together some posts from these instructions, I was able to get it working. Here's what I did:

1) Enabled SHMConfig by following these instructions, which is to basically create the file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi and add this to it:

<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

2) Add the following command "syndaemon -i 1 -d -t -S" to System->Preferences->Startup Applications

3) Restart

It worked like a charm and now I don't have to worry about the cursor jumping around like crazy when I'm typing.