Synaptics Touchpad on Dell Laptop Tap to click not working in FC2

[ZeroVerteX]

In FC1 I could tap the touchpad to click. I've loaded a fresh install of FC2 on it and I have to use the buttons to click. I can't tap to click anymore. It's just a minor annoyance, but if anyone could help I would greatly appreciate it!

[Steve++]

Ah! Just the problem I finally fixed yesterday. And I'm a complete noob. Open /boot/grub/grub.conf in your favourite text editor, find a line that starts with kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358, and add psmouse.proto=imps to the end.

This is one workaround. The other involves fixing the kernel. Something to do with evdev - i don't know what that is... Some guy said using the above method made his mouse pointer movement choppy and the kernel patching method made it work smoothly and flawlessly. But to be honest, I can't say I've noticed any real choppiness.

Let me know how you go.

[ZeroVerteX]

Steve++ is the man! That worked great! Thank you so much!

[micha]

That's weird, I got a Dell Inspiron 8600 and FC2, and the tap-to-click feature works out of the box.

[Steve++]

Yeah, weird indeed. Perhaps taps are converted to clicks in hardware by defaut. Who knows... All I know is that this is a kernel 2.6 thing. When I installed RH9 the other day, tap-click worked fine. Like FC1, that also has kernel 2.4.

[sancho]

This parameter did indeed work for me as well and did duplicate the behavior of FC1 on my laptop.

I can, however, attest to increased choppiness with this parameter. To me, it is quite noticable, but luckily not bad enough to render it unusable (I guess I got used to it with FC1 as it was choppy by default).

[quinquen]

thanks for your post, I hope to solve the same problem, but on a compaq presario laptop.

see ya

[luibh]

work with hp pavilion ze4420

[oddworld14]

Is there any way to turn it off? My laptop is a dell 8600 and it worked out of the box... but one thing, I dont want it lol. I hate it, i dont use the touchpad and when i type it clicks somewhere from me resting my wrists. Thanks

[debi]

Thanx for the tip!! I received a new dell inspiron 1150, installed fedora (k12ltsp) and the once working touchpad didn't work... until a google search led me here. Thanx again.

:o)