Toggle touchpad on or off

I have a problem with my latest laptop, the flSynclient synaptics GUI app does not work. I found that the touchpad does not use the synaptics protocol. Perhaps this is a sign of what to expect in modern laptops.

Input devices can be configured by the 'xinput' CLI utility. There is no decent standalone GUI frontend for 'xinput', so for now just implementing one function, a GUI to toggle the touchpad off or on.

The problem for me is I always use a USB mouse, but on a laptop sometimes a finger or some part of the hand accidentally touches the touchpad, causing unexpected action. So, want a quick way to turn off the touchpad, and remember at future bootups.

Created /usr/sbin/touchpad-toggle, here is the GUI:

Simple, solves my problem. /root/.xinitrc reads /var/local/touchpad-off for future bootups.   

Tags: easy