Ubuntu – Configure ’50-synaptics.conf’ for kinetic scrolling

multi-touchscrollingtouchpadxorg

My laptop has a Synaptics touchpad with multi-touch support. Kinetic two-finger scrolling works fine on windows, how can I get it to work on ubuntu?

I have already reversed the scrolling direction by editing the /usr/share/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf, all I need now is to give it some inertia.

I am using the 32 bit version of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

This link explains a lot about the different parameters, but I can't seem to find the right parameters to set in order to achieve this. Please do not answer unless you have tried this before. Thank you 🙂

Best Answer

In Linux kinetic scrolling is called "Coasting", at least in the Synaptics driver.

You can do it by adding following option lines to the file 50-synaptics.conf file, adapting the values as you require:

# Coasting configuration
Option "CornerCoasting" "0"
Option "CoastingSpeed" "20"
Option "CoastingFriction" "50"

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Ubuntu – Help trying to get two-finger scrolling to work on Asus UL80VT

To get your synclient settings to stick you can add them to xorg.conf. I did this recently for my macbook pro in 12.10 and it works pretty well.

You can also specify a separate configuration file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ file to keep things neater. Here's a step by step:

Create /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d (if it doesn't already exist)

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
Create and edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf

Make it look like the following:

#Sample /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf
Section "InputClass"
  Identifier "touchpad catchall"
  Driver "synaptics"
  MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
  MatchIsTouchpad "true"
  Option  "SHMConfig"           "true"
  Option  "TapButton1"          "1"
  Option  "TapButton2"          "2"
  Option  "TapButton3"          "3"
EndSection

Save and logout/login again. If the xserver fails to load and you get forced into low graphics mode then edit the file again and comment everything out, or mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf ~/10-synaptics.conf.backup and reload again to get back to normal.

For posterity, my current setup for my macbook pro 2012 13" is as follows (warning, I like my touchpad rather sensitive). Try any of these options using synclient before putting them into xorg.conf!

Section "InputClass"
      Identifier "touchpad catchall"
      Driver "synaptics"
      MatchIsTouchpad "on"
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
      MatchProduct "bcm5974"
      MatchIsTouchpad "true"
      Option  "SHMConfig"           "true"
      Option  "FastTaps"            "1"
      Option  "MaxDoubleTapTime"    "100"
      Option  "BottomEdge"          "6000"
      Option  "FingerLow"           "60"
      Option  "FingerHigh"          "90"
      Option         "ClickFinger3" "2"
#      Option         "FingerLow"             "30"
#      Option         "FingerHigh"            "80"
      Option         "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
      Option         "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
      Option         "VertScrollDelta" "100"
      Option         "HorizScrollDelta" "100"
      Option         "MultiFingerButton" "2"
      #Option         "TapButton1" "1"
      Option         "TapButton2" "3"
      Option         "TapButton3" "2"
      Option         "MinSpeed" "1"
      Option         "MaxSpeed" "2"
      Option         "AccelFactor" "0.01"
#      Option         "AreaBottomEdge" "5000"
EndSection

Ubuntu – SynPS/2 Synaptic Touchpad not working in Ubuntu 17.10

Run this command in terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

You will find a line like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

Now replace "quiet splash" with "acpi=force"

So the new line will be:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="acpi=force"

Save the file.

Now run this command:

sudo update-grub

This should solve your problem.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – Help trying to get two-finger scrolling to work on Asus UL80VT

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