Linux: Enable Laptop Touchpad Vertical Scrolling and Tapping from Command Line
Table of Contents
I noticed that the Fedora Linux with KDE desktop, has reasonably poor support for laptop touchpad adjustment. For example, the KDE > System Settings > Keyboard & Mouse > Mouse options will not be able to enable vertical scrolling and touchpad tapping. So I decided to write this short guide, howto enable Touchpad vertical scrolling and tapping from command line without any GUI.
Enable Laptop Touchpad Vertical Scrolling⌗
Simply write following on command line:
synclient VertEdgeScroll=1
Enable Laptop Touchpad Tapping⌗
Simply write following on command line:
synclient TapButton1=1
Make Previous Options Permanent⌗
Change to root User
su -
## OR ##
sudo -i
Create a configuration file
Copy /usr/share/hal/fdi/policies/20thirdparty/10-synaptics.fdi example file to /etc/hal/fdi/policy
cp /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/10-synaptics.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy
Add following lines to configuration file
<merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">1</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>
Full configuration file looks like this
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"??>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match contains="input.touchpad" key="info.capabilities">
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">1</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>