system settings not working (scrolling and touch click)

answered 2015-10-09 23:58:55 +0000

veraxest
1

I'm sorry to post this question in this thread, but it might effect some users who adjust their mouse settings using the xinput(?)

I added

exec --no-startup-id xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Device Accel Constant Deceleration" 0.35

into ~/.i3/config and it worked perfectly, until I enabled "Automatic user login". i3 simply doesn't execute this line on startup anymore. Enabling password on login solved the problem again. Another strange thing is, that this line is beying executed normaly on the other machine, which runs exectly the same Dist and i3WM, - also Automatic login without password enabled. What could be the reason?

answered 2014-05-23 08:06:28 +0000

Adaephon
2299 ●3 ●16 ●42

updated 2014-05-23 08:07:40 +0000

The settings you make in Ubuntu Settings are only loaded if you start a Unity session (the same holds true for systemsettings in KDE, or gnome-settings).

You can configure your touchpad (also mouse and keyboard) with the tool xinput:

List devices:

$ xinput list
⎡Virtual core pointer
⎜  ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer      id=2   [master pointer   (3)]
⎜  ↳ PS/2 Generic Mouse              id=12  [slave  pointer   (2)]
⎜  ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad      id=13  [slave  pointer   (2)]
[...]

In my case I have a touchpad and a trackpoint.

To show properties of a device call xinput list-props with the ID or name of the device (IDs are obviously shorter, but may change between reboots)

$ xinput list-props "SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad"
Device 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad':
        Device Enabled (142):   1
        [...]
        Synaptics Tap Time (291):   150
        [...]
        Synaptics Scrolling Distance (298): 107, 107
        [...]

To disable tapping set Synaptics Tap Time to 0:

$ xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad" "Synaptics Tap Time" 0

For natural scrolling negate both values of Synaptics Scrolling Distance. The first is for vertical scrolling, the second for horizontal:

$ xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad" "Synaptics Scrolling Distance" -107, -107

Note: the actual values for (here 107) may be different for your device.

You can just start these commands from ~/.i3/config

exec --no-startup-id xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad" "Synaptics Tap Time" 0
exec --no-startup-id xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad" "Synaptics Scrolling Distance" -107, -107

If you want to have system-wide settings (all users, login-screen), you'll have to edit or create /etc/X11/xorg.conf or a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ with extension .conf.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf/50-touchpad.conf:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Touchpad"
    MatchIsTouchpad "yes"
    Driver "synaptics"
    Option "MaxTapTime" "0"
    Option "VertScrollDelta" "-107"
    Option "HorizScrollDelta" "-107"

Sadly, the option names for xorg.conf are not the same as the one used with xinput, but you can look up the mapping in man 4 synaptics. In order for these changes to be applied, you will have to restart Xorg.