Why does LXDE hate left-handed laptop users?

[phr33k]

LinuxMint 14 32-bit up to date
Kernel Linux 3.5.0-17
LXDE 0.5.0-4ubuntu3 (I guess; whatever's the latest version on 13 Jan 13)

Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop
Synaptics touchpad ver. 6.2 firmware

I think this is a shortcoming of LXDE.

I'm a leftie Linux noob. When I set the mouse to be left-handed on my LXDE laptop, I lose tap-to-click because tapping my touchpad works like a right-click for right-handed people or a left-click for left-handed people. For a left-handed person, tapping the touch pad should act like a right-click, which would be a left-click for right-handed people.

Microsoft figured this out long, long ago (previous millenium?) and other desktop environments in several other GNU/Linux distros get it right. Linuxmint with Cinnamon, which is what I usually use, gets it right, for example.

Left-handed people are not disabled. Why should we be discriminated against? Why should only right-handed people be allowed to use tap-to-click with LXDE?

I posted about this in the LXDE forum a month ago and the only reply I got was from a right-handed guy who tried setting his mouse to be left-handed and basically said "yeah, you're right."

[brnartg]

Hi! I'm a left handed user and suffered from the same problem... but think I got this figured out...for what I've been reading, Ubuntu (Gnome, and now Unity) uses a certain mouse/touchpad configuration, so the tap-to-click feature works all the time even if you set for left handed... and to tell you the truth I don't know whats wrong with Debian, LXDE, XFCE, etc, but they can not get it right... Now I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 with Fluxbox and the tap-to-click-is-right-click problem persists! but as I told you I think I have this figured out... try this:

First open a terminal and enter this in order to swap the left and right buttons:

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xinput set-button-map "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" 3 2 1

You'll land on square one, that means the tap-to-click will be "right click", now enter the following:

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synclient TapButton1=3

And you'll get the tap-to-click right! it took me a while to figure it out but it worked for me.
Now when I was using using Ubuntu under Gnome Shell I always liked two-finger-tap-right-click, so if you want to get that back enter this:

Code: Select all

synclient TapButton2=1

And you'll get the tap-to-click as it should be, and two-finger-tap-is-right-click... the sad part about this is that when I log out or restart my computer all the configuration is lost. I think that I should turn all this into a script and run on startup, but I'm not that advanced of a user yet... if this also works for you please let me know!

Good luck!

[tdockery97]

Here's your script:


#!/bin/bash
xinput set-button-map "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" 3 2 1
synclient TapButton1=3
synclient TapButton2=1


Copy and paste that into a new document using gedit or your favorite text editor. Save it with whatever name you like. Then right-click the file, select Properties, and tick the box to make it executable. Go to Startup Applications, add a new one, and navigate to your newly saved file as the executable. Then just add it. You should be able to log out/log in and it will take effect.

[roganjosh]

Thanks for taking a look. I'm now using Ubuntu 13.04 (boo! sorry ) but if I move back to mint I'll take a look at this script!

[paul_kiss]

brnartg, thanks a lot for your workaround, exactly what I was looking for.