Very erratic and jumpy touchpad pointer on Lubuntu 18.04

Hi,

Installed Lubuntu 18.04.3 on my old laptop, a Compaq CQ42 using intel Pentium P6200 dual-core processor with 2GB RAM and 5400rpm HDD… pretty dated config as you might imagine, and thus the need to keep it as lean-n-mean as possible. I plan to turn this into a “carry along” live-audio workstation (I know, I know – people might be shaking their heads, but I’d like to try before I give up). More of that perhaps in another post as I progress.

This laptop was running Cruncbang Linux on which I had managed to perfect the trackpad setting s.t. it’s original jumpy, unpredictable (too sensitive to even mild brushes while typing) was completely fixed. However, I’ve been reading around a bit on how to achieve the same on Lubuntu. I found this SO topic, especially the answer that starts with:

I am using Razer Blade Early 2017 and my touchpad is Synaptics TM2438-005 running Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver

Wondering if it is safe to assume that it’d work on Lubuntu 18.04 as well ? Or any pointers to more appropriate steps ?

cheers,
BD

Might have found the solution for this problem, although it doesn’t seem to be perfect. While I had started down the path of xinput but found that synclient is perhaps an easier (possibly preferred method) to change trackpad settings. Following synclient commands were entered which seem to give (so far) a reasonable compromise between the touch sensitivity for general usage of the trackpad and the false positives of mistaken brushes, palm touches etc.

Created a ./.trackpad_config.sh containing:

#!/bin/bash

synclient FingerHigh=70
synclient FingerLow=40
synclient PalmDetect=1

Then, I added the /home//.trackpad_config.sh to the application auto-startup via:
Preferences > Default applications for LXSession > Autostart
and then do an “add”.

Some simulated fast typing and brushes with the palm seem to be taken care of. I am not yet sure of the autostart being the right way to make this change permanent. Would be much nicer to put it in a config file, but for now, will do.

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