QSynaptics doesn't do what it's supposed to ... but it does something I want ... and other Linux natterings on a late Friday

I've tried Qsynaptics before to control the touchiness of my Alps touchpad, but I figured I'd try again. I didn't know last time that I needed to add the following line (in bold italics below) to this portion of my xorg.conf (and then restart X):

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Option "SHMConfig" "true"

I didn't really expect it to work with the Alps touchpad.

I did this in the deep, dark past to make the Alps touchpad go from totally slow to, now, too fast.

But today I tried Qsynaptics again after modifying my xorg.conf. It's a simple apt-get install qsynaptics at a root prompt.

Again, it didn't control the tap-to-click feature of the Alps touchpad. I tried turning off the touchpad with qsynaptics. That didn't work, either, but it did slow down the touchpad speed enough that I can use GNOME's mouse settings to make it just the right speed. It did the same for my USB mouse -- which was way too fast also.

Now the mouse action is perfect, and all I have to do to make the touchpad perfect is add a little speed in the GNOME configuration.

I also put xset m 1/1000 (don't know if it goes to 1/1000 ... but it had some effect) in .xinitrc, so I don't know which of these three things (xset in .xinitrc, qsynaptics or Option "SHMConfig" "true" in xorg.cong) did the trick, or if it was a combination thereof. It's hacky as shit, that's for sure. But it's also almost working (I still couldn't kill the tap-to-click feature, even though I'm pretty much used to it).

I added all the educational software I need for our 4-year-old -- Childsplay, GCompris, Potato Guy (unhelpfully called Ktubering) -- and I could've added way more games if I wanted (I didn't add the entire kdegames package, of which Ktubering is but one part). I'd never heard of Childsplay before, but it looks very promising.

So it looks like it'll be "computer lab" time this weekend for me and the little one, this time in Debian instead of Ubuntu.

I'm still considering replacing Debian Lenny with Ubuntu (either Dapper or Gutsy ... such is my dilemma), but my current plan is to keep Lenny around until Ubuntu's 8.04 LTS release is ready.