Zambayoni at 17:06, 26 February 2009

2009-02-26T17:06:00Z

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HOWTO- Getting Macbook Touchpad working correctly

This howto is what to do to get your Macbook touchpad working correctly. When I first installed Sabayon, my mouse seemed to drift to the top right corner every time I put my finger on the touchpad. Also, trying to move the mouse around seemed very slow. I used these commands from a Gentoo wiki[http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Apple_MacBook#Touchpad_in_X11] to configure the Macbook touchpad.

Open up a terminal instance and make sure you have root access.

Use Vi (or your favorite editor) to edit /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 and make sure you have these listed in this order.
<pre>
uhci_hcd
evdev
appletouch
usbhid
mousedev
</pre>

Make sure that your xorg.conf has this in it.
<pre>
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse1"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "LeftEdge" "100"
Option "RightEdge" "1120"
Option "TopEdge" "50"
Option "BottomEdge" "310"
Option "FingerLow" "25"
Option "FingerHigh" "30"
Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
Option "MaxTapMove" "220"
Option "MaxDoubleTapTime" "180"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "20"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "50"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.79"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.88"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.0015"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection
</pre>

Restart X (CTRL+ALT+Backspace) and now you should be able to move your mouse even though it still may drift.

To fix the touchpad drifting problem, you will have to configure your touchpad through the Control Center (assuming you are using KDE). Navigate to peripherals -> touchpad and check the box that says ALPS. Click on configure and a window should pop up with instructions. Basically all you have to do is left click and then move your finger along the side it tells you to so it knows the dimensions of your touchpad. It may take a little while before it recognizes and the “Next” button is available for you to press. Finish this and your touchpad should be working without the annoying drift. I hope this helped.

Vertical/horizontal scrolling is achieved by moving the finger at the right/bottom edge of the pad. You can also activate a "Mac-style" two-finger-scrolling behaviour by adding the section below to xorg.conf
<pre>
Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
</pre>

[[Category:Input Devices|Getting Macbook Touchpad working correctly]]

HOWTO: Getting Macbook Touchpad working correctly - Revision history

Zambayoni at 17:06, 26 February 2009