[kUBUNTU] X240 Clickpad

Question

I bought a X240 and installed kUBUNTU 14.04 on it. Everything worked fine during installation execpt the clickpad.
I bought several thinkpads since T21 in 2001 as I love the trackpoint so much. Now the X240 is a mess, it's impossible to work with the trackpoint as by unintended approach to the pad, a windows is moved or may be minimized, icons got rotated, whatever. It's impossible to work with the computer witout an external mouse which is absolutely not intended.
My Questions:
Under WINDOWS I tried to disable the clickpad in the BIOS, this worked and kept the mouse buttons alive; this could be a preferred option for me. Doing the same under LINUX, the mouse buttons are disabled, e.g. no option. Anybody out there can tell me the reason for this difference?
What is the designed working-principle of the mouse buttons: Necessary to press down (move the pad mechanically down with hearable noise) or sufficient to lay on a finger at the appropriate location?
Anybody using the X240 or a similar clickpad machine and could tell me his configuration?
There are lots of decriptions of these problems and modifications of the Setup-File (50-synaptics.conf) like:
UbuntuForum
ArchLinux
ThinkWiki
Splitbrain
MyDevelopedWorld
GabrielSaldana
Librador
WhoT
but as I'm not really sure about the designed principle of the pad, it's really hard to follow.
Thank you
Michael
Moderator comment: Subject edited for clarity and visibility.

Answer 1

Hey michah,
I'm using trying to use a W540 which is delivered with the same ... device. My configuration actually looks like this:
To achieve the reliable configuration with scrolling on middle click and trackpoint you have to build your own evdev driver from source patched with some stuff from synaptics. It sounds more complicated than it really is, there's a guy who put all neccessary steps into a script (which needs some fixes since he mixed up some file names) here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-evdev/+bug/1246683/comments/40
You have to use some custom xorg.conf files to make things work afterwards:
Make shure the folder /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ exists on your system (create it with root access if neccessary). Copy the following configuration into a new file located into that folder which has to end with .conf like "90-clickpad.conf"
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
MatchIsTouchpad "yes"
Driver "evdev"
Option "AreaTopEdge" "2700"
Option "AreaBottomEdge" "0"
Option "AreaRightEdge" "0"
Option "AreaLeftEdge" "0"
Option "SoftButtonAreas" "3600 0 0 2300 2750 3600 0 2300"
EndSection
Section "InputClass"
  Identifier      "Trackpoint"
  MatchProduct    "TrackPoint"
  MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
  MatchDriver     "evdev"
  Option          "EmulateWheel"        "true"
  Option          "EmulateWheelTimeout" "200"
  Option          "EmulateWheelButton"  "2"
  Option          "XAxisMapping"        "6 7"
  Option          "YAxisMapping"        "4 5"
EndSection
Most likely you have to correct the values after "AreaTopEdge" and "SoftButtonAreas". The first one defines the upper-most edge from bottom for using the default touchpad behavior, the second one defines the right and left mouse button areas like this:
RB-from-left RB-from-right RB-from-top RB-from-bottom MB-from-left MB-from-right MB-from-top MB-from-bottom
Without using the custom built evdev driver things work the same but without using middle mouse and trackpoint as scroll wheel. If you are interested in my deb for 64bit systems please drop me a line. It works on Debian-based systems like Debian-Ubuntu-Mint whatever D/E you are running. To get the coordinates for your poersonal clickpad configuration use "synclient -m 1" before you eventually remove the synaptics driver.
Cheers, Markus.
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