Synaptics drivers for the touchpad in Linux are being upgraded to be fully
compatible with those in Windows, but it will take time for that to trickle
down. You may not get a permanent fix until 10.10 comes out.

The laptop is made to be Windows compatible and Linux is trying its best
often without any cooperation for OEMs to get Linux to work after the fact.
Linux is clearly at a disadvantage when it comes to hardware. Microsoft does
not have to do anything because OEMs tailor their hardware for its
specifications and Linux developers must work hard to catch up. That being
said, many OEMs are starting to embrace Linux, as is the case with the
recent announcement from Synaptics.

www.osnews.com/.../Synaptics_Releases_Gesture_Suite_for_Linux_OEM\


There is something called touchfreeze that will stop the touchpad while you
type and Gsynaptics, a GUI for configuring the touchpad. I hope this is
helpful. Not being a Windows user, I don't know what it can do there and not
in Linux.

I use "sudo modprobe -r psmouse" to turn the touchpad off, then the same
comand (w/o) the "-r" to turn it back on, although it is always turned back
on after a reboot. I eventually just put those commands into a script so
all I have to do is type either "mouseon" or "mouseoff"... Not sure if that
command is "appropriate", but it works.

If it works then he could use this as two scripts and then map a key
combination to run one script and a different one to run the other.

That's a good idea, I never thought of mapping to a key combo.

I guess a search in help for key mapping will give me an idea of how to do
that.
And while thinking of that, my pc under windows has the key combination of,
Fn + F7 as the way to turn off/on touch pad and works, I wonder if I could
just
program those two to work right. On a related note, I think Roy commented
that
his HP has the combination of something and F9, so maybe I should try all of
my
F1-13 with the Fn key to see if it is a different combination that is set in
Ubuntu.
I think it is worth a try tonight.

Once you have the script made, go to system, preferences, keyboard
shortcuts, and click on add new. Hit the key combo you want, and type in the
name of your script under command. I think that would work. The script would
have to be a bit more advanced to have one shortcut to either turn it on or
off with the "modprobe" bit. Something where if it tries to turn it on and
returns a value of "false" (because its already on) it moves to an else to
turn it off, otherwise with a return of true the script ends? I'm not sure
how to approach that. If you have any luck writing it, please share! I
already do as Roy suggested and just have the two scripts, one for on and
another for off. I plan to try the shortcuts tonight when I get home as
well! Sadly, my bash skills have regressed quite a bit over the last few
years (they were never all that great to begin with).

Update: So to get these to work properly with the key assignments you need
to change the script as follows:
(note, it you tried "sudo modprobe -r psmouse" from a terminal and it didn't
work, this will not help you. If you tried it instead from the alt+f2, this
may still be an option.)
---------
script 1:
#! /bin/bash
modprobe psmoue
----------
script 2:
#! /bin/bash

modprobe -r psmouse

--------


Save script 1 as mouseon.sh and script 2 as moueoff.sh
copy the two scripts into /usr/bin with sudo priveledges
run "sudo chmod +x mouseon.sh" and "sudo chmod +x mouseoff.sh"

run "sudo mouseoff.sh" to test the script and see if it works.

go to system -> Preferences -> keyboard shortcuts -> add
1)type in name of your shortcut "something like turn mouse on" etc.
2) in command, put "gksudo mouseon.sh" then ok.
3) repeat above for mouseoff.sh then assign each to a different shortcut.

for some reason if you put the gksudo 'in' the script, it throws an error on
mouseoff.sh complaining about the "-r" tag. You only see the error if you
run it from terminal.

None of these work. Since I am fast approaching the 29th and 10.04
will come out official, and I expect soon after or on that date I will get
another update, I think I will wait to see if these things are fixed. If
they are not fixed then I will create a trouble report on what I have
found. I do see in the forum several others have talked about the touch
pad problem.
I think I will go up stairs and get my 9.10 live CD and boot from it to
see if the same problems are there.

In my preretirement days I was sysadm for a development organization
and did some system testing, usually in the OA&M area, but we usually
wanted to see on first testing round that faults found in the previous
builds
and fixed and tested and passed were not present in the current build.

Any way so far if I can keep my thumb in the air and not touch the mouse
in the middle of the keyboard I don't have much problem. I do use a wireless
mouse so the touch pad isn't really used, but once in a while I don't
have the
outboard mouse and then need to have the touch pad work. On windows I
can turn it off or on from the keyboard, is a nice option.

So until after the official LTS is issued I will just use what I have.
Thank you for attempting to help.

I am still having a lot of fun using this linux and will keep the dual
boot feature.

There is a sense in which no release of a linux distro is really final as
there will always be more bug fixes. That's a fact for all non-trivial
software, including MS's. However, Canonical does not release Ubuntu with
major flames having

Unless this is a very old posting, you have missed the final release date.
It came and went on APRIL 29th. The .04 in 10.04 means April!

Ok, so I am a few days behind, comes with my current age I guess.
That explains the update I have already installed.
I guess I will have to continue looking for a solution, or submit
my own bug report to see if anything gets done. I did try the
9.10 live CD and still saw the same behavior. I still think for some
reason because of this being a laptop some of the xserver software
is loaded which means some of the hardware tools don't work.

what type of laptop (brand and model) do you have, if you don't
mind me asking? That may help trigger someone's memory if they have come
across that issue in the past.

Ok, good idea. It was a relative cheap on a couple of years ago, the
name on it is MEDION AKOYA, I have done the lshw and saved the
out put so if some one wants to see what it has I can send it as attachment
in privet mail. I know it is 2 Gb memory, and 64 bit capable and not a bad
system running vista. I did do a full recover a few months ago just to clear
out some stuff. I had all the original disks and all of my backups so it
wasn't
too painful.
Any one interested let me know. The major problem as a recap is the touch
pad can't be turned off so while editing like in email or a document if
I touch
it with my thumb it can move the cursor to anywhere and if you aren't
looking
you can really screw up a document.
I just found another problem today. While trying to setup my remote
printer on
the Windows system upstairs, I can't find it on the HOME network. I checked
in smb.conf and it is set to HOME. Is there a way to verify that it is
indeed HOME?

this probably doesn't help much, but you really don't need to turn off
your touch pad; you only need to disable "taps". I don't recall whether or not
you said you had looked under SYSTEM > PREFERENCES > MOUSE, but that is where
you should have the option to disable "taps"

I have tried that, and I get an error message "GSynaptics couldn't
initalize. You have to set 'SHMConfig' 'true' in xorg.conf or XF86Conf
to use GSynaptics". Also on my keyboard is
a key labeled "Fn" which does things to the system, like brighten or dim
the screen. There
is a combination to true on/off the touch pad. The screen control works
fine the touchpad
control doesn't.
To make matters worse is I don't have the above quoted files to edit and
change 'SHMConfig'.
That is why I am playing with Samba. I also can print to windows
printers, nor mount windows
shared directories either, and I am trying to get the Linux system to be
part of the "HOME"
workgroup on the print/file server XP machine upstairs. As things move
along here I may
find other "problems" too.

One problem I am seeing on my home network is that the wired resources can see
each other, and the wireless resources can see each other, but the wired
resources can't see the wireless resources. It appears to be a router issue.

Yes I am seeing that too but has broken since I loaded 9.10 on the
desktop upstairs
and on the laptop downstairs. When I was on 8.10 I could attach the
shared printers
from the Windows XP connect to the two printers. I didn't have a laptop
with wireless
to test with. I have been playing with the smb.conf file on my laptop
and I think I am
seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, I just hope it isn't a
train. The problem is the
options I am playing with I think are for an obsolute version. I don't
know if I want to
jump to "Samba4" just yet. So it is on to more research for now. I may
have to go over to
the Ubuntu forums and ask around too, which might be a good first step.

Yes, which is as it was when I worked in a software development
area before retirement back in 00, boy does that make me sound
old, well I guess because I am.
Oh well time to start doing some more web searches.

I will try it tonight. I also have gone to the
manual
page for Lucid whatever this new release is to be called, and read the
manual,
ya I know not many do that, and see reference to the xorg.conf file which I
don't have on my system. In that file is something that can be used to turn
the
touch pad off. So I will be investigating that tonight also.

Have I mentioned that I haven't had this much fun since I retired as a Unix
system
and network admin? Ya I know weird I know.

"Have I mentioned that I haven't had this much fun since I retired as a Unix
system and network admin?"

I hear you. I never thought I would have as much fun learning something,
period.