archlinux - touchpad driver

In my old Presario V3000 the touchpad was working after installation, however the behaviour was a bit strange: the sensitivit was too high and when touching the cursor change the position on screen, like the touchpad area is related to a fixed position on screen.

To resolve this, the synaptics driver was installed.

# pacman -S xf86-input-synaptics

Then perform the configuration:

"The primary method of configuration for the touchpad is through an Xorg server configuration file. After installation of xf86-input-synaptics, a default configuration file is located at /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf. Users can copy this file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and edit it to configure the various driver options available."

Example of configuration file with some common options, including vertical, horizontal and circular scrolling as well as tap-to-click:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad"
    Driver "synaptics"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Option "TapButton1" "1"
        Option "TapButton2" "3"
        Option "TapButton3" "2"
        Option "VertEdgeScroll" "on"
        Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "on"
        Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "on"
        Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "on"
        Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
        Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2"
        Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" "40"
        Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinW" "8"
        Option "CoastingSpeed" "0"
        Option "FingerLow" "30"
        Option "FingerHigh" "50"
        Option "MaxTapTime" "125"
EndSection

Alternatively, the Graphical tool "GPointing Device Settings" can be installed to provides graphical on the fly configuration for the pointing device

# pacman -S gpointing-device-settings

References:
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#Installation