How to disable a synaptic touchpad in a laptop

Author: G0NZ0

You may be using a usb mouse, so the touchpad may get annoying.
If you have a synaptic touchpad (that is in the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf you have a line that says :Option "Name" "Synaptics;Touchpad") then you have 3 main possibilities:

1) Disable at each login

in the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf check if you have a line that says
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
if not, add it and reboot the X

Then type as a normal user
synclient TouchpadOff=1
to disable, while if you want to re-enable:
synclient TouchpadOff=0

This needs to be done each time X starts. Of course you can add an alias in your bashrc, for instance i added
alias tpoff='synclient TouchpadOff=1'
alias tpon='synclient TouchpadOff=0'
so i just type tpoff on login; fast and easy to remember, even if your brain should run out of memory

2) Disable for any user, permanently(*)

Alternatively you can disable globally commenting lines in xorg.conf
Comment the following lines of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

#Section "InputDevice"
# Driver "synaptics"
# Identifier "Mouse[3]"
# Option "Buttons" "5"
# Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
# Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
# Option "InputFashion" "Mouse"
# Option "Name" "Synaptics;Touchpad"
# Option "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
# Option "SHMConfig" "on"
# Option "Vendor" "Sysp"
# Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
#EndSection



Notice that you must not comment the section referring to your mouse, normally looking like the following:
Section "InputDevice"
Driver "mouse"
Identifier "Mouse[1]"
Option "Buttons" "5"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Name" "Logitech Optical Mouse"
Option "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
Option "Vendor" "Sysp"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

3) Disable for any user, permanently(*) - 2nd way

Alternatively you can disable the touchpad globally, by adding or modifying a line in xorg.conf:
find the touchpad definition part in this file and change/add the option:
Option "MaxTapTime" "0"






(*) NOTICE: "permanently" means you don't need to do the procedure at each logon but you can re-enable the touchpad at any time just re-modifying the xorg.conf file.