Ubuntu – Disable touchpad hardware buttons

Open gedit and copy-paste the following lines into it:

#!/bin/sh
# This script disables the touchpad without disabling buttons by setting Hysteresis
# to an impossible value.

############
# Warning! #
############
# If you have a touchpad with no "Physical" buttons but have to tap the corners 
# of your touchpad to simulate physical buttons, put a "#" sign in front of the next
# 4 lines!

synclient LTCornerButton=1
#synclient LBCornerButton=0
synclient RTCornerButton=3
#synclient RBCornerButton=0


# Set PalmDetect on: Needed if the before lines are commented away,
# Doesn't do any harm if they're not
synclient PalmDetect=1

synclient HorizHysteresis=10000 
synclient VertHysteresis=10000

# Disable all other touchpad features
synclient VertEdgeScroll=0
synclient HorizEdgeScroll=0
synclient CornerCoasting=0
synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=0
synclient HorizTwoFingerScroll=0
synclient TouchpadOff=2
synclient LockedDrags=0
synclient TapButton1=0
synclient TapButton2=0
synclient TapButton3=0
synclient CircularPad=0

Then save it as /usr/local/bin/DisableTouchPad.sh

In a terminal type:

chmod a+xr /usr/local/bin/DisableTouchPad.sh

To activate it type:

DisableTouchPad.sh

and test whether this works.

To make this change permanent, go to the dash, open "Startup Applications", click add, in the command type: /usr/local/bin/DisableTouchPad.sh and in the Name and Comment type anything that will remind you what this was about. Click add again.

Presto: a disabled touchpad with the buttons still enabled!

Ok, as described in https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/156949/how-to-keep-the-touchpad-but-want-to-deactivate-the-buttons, it's possible to deactivate the hardware buttons in a laptop using xinput. The basic steps are the following:

1. Get the name (or id) of your touchpad

   xinput list
   

2. With that name (or id) you can disable you touchpad totally like this,

   xinput --disable 12
   

   being 12 the id of your touchpad, or you can disable only some buttons, using

   xinput list --long 12
   

   to get a map of the different buttons and then the option --set-button-map to remap them. For example,

   xinput --set-button-map 12 0 0 0 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
   

   disables the first three buttons in my touchpad, that is, left, center and right.