Ubuntu synaptics touchpad is too sensitive

Question

I recently switched from Windows to Linux (Linux Mint specifically) on my IBM T61 laptop. Since making the switch, my touchpad has been nearly unusable. When I place one finger on the touchpad, without moving it, the cursor bobs around in a small area as if I am making a number of small movements. I think the cursor is moving around because the sensitivity is too high - just rotating the tip of my finger in place moves the cursor over about one-third of the screen. My trackpad does not suffer from the same problem.

I have lowered the sensitivity in the mouse settings to its minimum and I have tried to follow the advice from http://iruel430.blogspot.com/2010/06/lowering-mouse-sensitivity-in-ubuntu.html and also reduce laptop touch pad sensitivity in ubuntu. But, in both cases, my touchpad still has the same behavior.

Perhaps there is an xinput setting I am overlooking? Is there a better driver I can use for my T61?

Solution 1

I usually hate necroposting, but I was having this same problem and it was driving me nuts. I found an answer that appears to work for me, on a Lenovo y500 running Ubuntu 13.10.

>xinput --set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Noise Cancellation" 20 20

Solution 2

I had this issue on many variants of linux. Currently I am on Elementary OS Loki. I had autoated the fix of this problem by creating following shell script at /etc/X11/Xsession.d/56touchpadfix

export `xinput list | grep -i touchpad | awk '{ print $6 }'`
xinput --set-prop "$id" "Synaptics Noise Cancellation" 20 20
xinput --set-prop "$id" "Synaptics Finger" 35 45 250
xinput --set-prop "$id" "Synaptics Scrolling Distance" 180 180
true

You need to tune values for your hardware. Mine work for Sony SVS series laptop.

Solution 3

I had a similar issue when I dual installed Win7 and OpenSUSE on my HP DV6-6047cl notebook. Actually, I had this problem with the touchpad in both OSes.

It's good you were able to resolve it. I'll post my resolution here in case it helps anyone else. I was able to resolve the issue in Linux by disabling the "tap to click" feature. I'm not sure where this is in the Ubuntu system, but if OpenSUSE had a setting I'm guessing Ubuntu has one too. That seemed to help a lot. It's pretty amazing that with all the problems people have had with the Synaptics touchpads for years now, it is still a problem on newer devices.

Comments

[Michael Diamant]

Thank you for posting your solution. When I hook my laptop to an external monitor, the cursor is still jumpy because the secondary monitor has a different resolution than the laptop. For some reason, Ubuntu does not adjust for this properly and this results in a jumpy cursor. Disabling 'tap to click' reduces this problem significantly.

[Ian Dunn]

This worked well for me, but I still had some noise at 20 20, so I increased it to 30 30 and that's working great.

[James Newton]

What do the three numbers after "Synaptics Finger" control? Is there any documentation?