Why the changes to the 18.04 desktop?

[Volker Wysk]

Am Montag, den 19.10.2020, 21:32 +1100 schrieb Owen Thomas:
> 
> On Mon, 19 Oct 2020 at 20:52, Volker Wysk <post at volker-wysk.de> wrote:
> > > With "mousepad" you mean "touchpad", right?
> 
> Yep sorry. My mistake.
>  
> > > 
> > > I'm using a command in my .bashrc file, in order to turn off the touchpad 
> > > of my laptop. It's easily done when it should always turned off (because you're
> > > using a mouse and don't need it). If you want to be able to turn it on and
> > > off via a keyboard shortcut, it might be possible to knit something. 
> 
> I'd love for that something to be knitted. I know there is a command one can enter to turn the touchpad on and off - perhaps a few years ago now I wrote to this very list and got the low down then.
> 
> Yes, all this probably makes me lazy sod, but I suppose no lazier than millions of other Ubuntu users with lives to be lived who would, I suppose, really like to disable their touchpads as well.
> Many, many gracious platitudes indeed would be bestowed to the individual who disabled our touchpads.

I think I've figured out how this can be done. In Gnome Control Center -> Keyboard shortcuts [translated back from German to English], there can be created new shortcuts (with the "+" at the bottom of
the list). You can enter a command, which is to be executed when the shortcut keys are pressed. So you could create two shell scripts for touchpad-on and touchpad-off, which turn the touchpad on/off,
using Colin Law's commands (see the other message). Then you'd add shortcuts for those two commands.

> > Come to think of it, I believe the touchpad of my laptop can be turned on
> > and off with a key combination involving the blue-lettered "Fn" key. You 
> > might already have what you're looking for.
> 
> It would be great to know what that is, because I did search for it once, but never found it. I have a Dell Latitude E5570. Had it for about five years now. I just checked all of my function keys.
> Alas.

I've unpacked my laptop (a Sony Vaio) and taken a look. The keys to be pressed in combination with the "Fn" key are marked with blue symbols on some of the function keys. I can't find a symbol for
turning the touchpad on/off. So probably I'm wrong, and the touchpad can't be toggled that way.

From what you've written, It sounds like your keyboard doesn't have those blue imprints on some keys. And you've already tried all function keys  ...   so, bad luck.


Cheers,
Volker
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