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I can't get two-finger scrolling to work in LXDE w/ Ubuntu 12.10.

Here's a brief history. I upgraded my machine (an old Dell Inspiron 1200) from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Ubuntu 12.10 all in one fell swoop, and then installed LXDE and completely removed all ubuntu-desktop packages using the psychocats instructions (because I greatly dislike Unity). In short, it's more or less basically like Lubuntu now, as far as I can tell. All other programs and settings work just fine -- but not two-finger scrolling.

Help?

(Oh, and there will be bonus points for anyone with right ideas about how to enable "natural scrolling" after I get the two-finger scrolling working!)

3 Answers 3

7

I found an answer here and have summarized it below.

TWO-FINGER SCROLLING

Create and/or edit a file called mouse.fdi like so:

sudo leafpad /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse.fdi

Paste in this stuff:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>
  <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
   <merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">true</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.HorizEdgeScroll" type="string">true</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.MaxTapTime" type="string">0</merge>
  </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>

Save! Reboot! Done!


BONUS: "NATURAL SCROLLING"

Enable "natural scrolling" (AKA "reverse scrolling") by creating a file in the home directory called .Xmodmap like so:

leafpad ~/.Xmodmap

And paste in this stuff:

pointer = 1 2 3 5 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Save! Reboot! Done!


DOUBLE BONUS: DISABLE TAP-TO-CLICK

Open the session autostart file:

sudo leafpad /etc/xdg/lxsession/Lubuntu/autostart

And append this stuff (or simply run it from the command line for a one-off solution):

synclient MaxTapTime=0

Save! Reboot! Done!

0

Two finger scrolling only works on computers that support it. Yours might not. My Dell Latitude D830 doesn't support two finger scrolling, so I use edge scrolling.

1
  • 2
    Good point, but it worked fine on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and then again when I upgraded to 12.10. It only STOPPED working when I followed the psychocats instructions and made my system a "pure" Lubuntu. It's quite possible that I removed a package necessary for two-finger scrolling, but I have no way of knowing which package that might be. Or it could be that Lubuntu doesn't support two-finger scrolling. I just don't know.
    – jrc03c
    Dec 30, 2012 at 2:05
0

Just complementing the excellent @jrc03c answer, you can also use synclient to achieve the natural scrolling:

synclient VertScrollDelta=-30  # Trackpad: natural scrolling
synclient MaxTapTime=0         # Trackpad: disable tap-to-click

Worked for me in my old MacBook white 2007 with Lubuntu 16.10.

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