Disable Unity Multitouch Gestures (Unity 7.3.3, Ubuntu 15.10)

Question

I have yet to find an answer for Unity V7.3+ and/or Ubuntu 15+, is it really still the case that there are zero options for disabling these without recompiling Unity?

I have a touchscreen monitor, Acer 232HL, not a touchpad.

According to comments from here this modification to the source code is still valid at least up until 7.2.2. I would rather not recompile Unity but if there is no other way...

Thanks for taking your time to read this.

Answer 1

Couldn't find any other options. Only way I could find was to recompile Unity. At least it is straight forward.

Credit goes to the guys here.

sudo apt-get build-dep unity
cd /tmp  #It can be done somewhere else, feel free to change the base location.
mkdir unity
cd unity
apt-get source unity

Now the file you're looking for is /tmp/unity/unity-7.3.2/plugins/unityshell/src/unityshell.cpp

Here's the lines that need to be commented out. I wound up recompiling 7.3.2, they start on line 4086.

void UnityScreen::InitGesturesSupport()
{
  std::unique_ptr<nux::GestureBroker> gesture_broker(new UnityGestureBroker);
  wt->GetWindowCompositor().SetGestureBroker(std::move(gesture_broker));
  /*
  gestures_sub_launcher_.reset(new nux::GesturesSubscription);
  gestures_sub_launcher_->SetGestureClasses(nux::DRAG_GESTURE);
  gestures_sub_launcher_->SetNumTouches(4);
  gestures_sub_launcher_->SetWindowId(GDK_ROOT_WINDOW());
  gestures_sub_launcher_->Activate();

  gestures_sub_dash_.reset(new nux::GesturesSubscription);
  gestures_sub_dash_->SetGestureClasses(nux::TAP_GESTURE);
  gestures_sub_dash_->SetNumTouches(4);
  gestures_sub_dash_->SetWindowId(GDK_ROOT_WINDOW());
  gestures_sub_dash_->Activate();

  gestures_sub_windows_.reset(new nux::GesturesSubscription);
  gestures_sub_windows_->SetGestureClasses(nux::TOUCH_GESTURE
                                     | nux::DRAG_GESTURE
                                     | nux::PINCH_GESTURE);
  gestures_sub_windows_->SetNumTouches(3);
  gestures_sub_windows_->SetWindowId(GDK_ROOT_WINDOW());
  gestures_sub_windows_->Activate();
  */
}

Rebuild Unity:

cd /tmp/unity/unity-7.3.2
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -nc
cd ..
sudo dpkg -i *deb

Reboot.

Finally file a feature request to have this as a configuration option somewhere.