Change touchpad movement sensitivity in ubuntu

Before we start, it is important to make a backup of the file we are going to edit. If you make a mistake it is possible that your desktop environment will not start. So, open a terminal (Applications, Accessories, Terminal) and run the following command:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup_touchpad

If you do make a mistake and end up without a desktop environment (X won’t start) then simply hit ctrl+alt+F1 to get to a virtual terminal and run the following commands:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup_touchpad /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

You should probably write down the above commands if you don’t know what they mean.

Now that we backed up our xorg.conf file, we can get down to editing it. Run this command in a terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now find the place where it says something similar to:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver      "synaptics"
Option        "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option        "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option        "Protocol" "auto-dev"
EndSection

Add the following options before the “EndSection” text:

Option        "MinSpeed" "0.1"
Option        "MaxSpeed" "0.3"
Option        "AccelFactor" "0.0017"

Save the file and then restart X. You can restart X quickly with Ctrl + Alt + Backspace.

For more information about synaptic touchpads and more tweaking options check out this wiki.

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