bye, touchpad

In Debian Wheezy KDE, I was trying to find ways to disable my notebook's touchpad, which I don't like to use at all. I installed kde-config-touchpad, which adds the Touchpad module in System Settings > Input Devices. But I could see nothing in the module for disabling the touchpad.

But, opening up synaptics from KDE Menu > Utilities opened a window with the same touchpad configuration module plus a "Touchpad management" tab. In Touchpad management, I put a check in the box next to "Automatically switch off touchpad, if a mouse is plugged," and that worked.

I found that Kubuntu 12.04 included kde-config-touchpad by default, so I used the same steps there to disable the touchpad in Kubuntu.

Alternatively, I found that it's possible to set the touchpad to be disabled only during typing by running the following command:

$ syndaemon -d

This disables the touchpad for 2 seconds after the most recent keystroke; 2 seconds is the daemon's default. To change this "idle time," use:

$ syndaemon -i n -d

where n is the idle time in seconds.

See man syndaemon.