External touchpad for Ubuntu?

[Colin Law]

On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 at 03:49, Owen Thomas <owen.paul.thomas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 21 Dec 2020 at 01:11, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> synclient touchpadoff=1
>
>
> I have just taken receipt of my next computer (a Dell Latitude 5511 on which Ubuntu 20.04 has been upgraded by me from 18.04 which was installed by Dell), and have attempted to run the command you have suggested from a CLI window. After installing xserver-xorg-input-synaptics, the following response is given: Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?
>
> After finding this link, i first removed xserver-xorg-input-synaptics, restarted my new laptop and then reinstalled. Alas, nothing, so I decided to remove and reinstall before restarting, and viola. No only can I disable my touchpad, but the setting sticks when the focus leaves the CLI window. So, I guess I'm relatively good now. I'll let you know if I have any issue associating hotkeys.

Interestingly when I google that error I find links suggesting that
Gnome doesn't use the synaptics drivers any more, using libinput
instead, the result being that synclient no longer works.  So I am not
sure what is going on.

Colin