1337 h4x in Ubuntu... I think?

So I've decided to play around with Linux some more. I've got an Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope dual boot on my retired desktop (retired since it doesn't handle a cable attack by a 2-year-old very well) but my laptop has just been running Windows 7.

Well I got bored the other day and decided to tinker around with it some more. Downloaded Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx yesterday and got it set up. Since I'm just tinkering, I went with the somewhat lame-o "installed within Windows" Wubi install. I'm not really looking for max performance, and I really didn't feel like repartitioning my hard drive, so give me a break. :-p

Once it was done installing, I rebooted, and selected the Ubuntu boot. One thing that always bugs me is that if you do the Wubi install, you have to go through 2 bootloaders, Windows and GRUB. I might just axe one of them later today. One thing that has always impressed me about Ubuntu is it's capability to run well "out of the box". Sure enough, everything was functioning great; I had my Google Talk and Gmail all configured and was connected to the wireless in minutes. I downloaded Chrome and began surfing the web, installing Adobe Flash 10.1 on the way.

Then I noticed one little problem; tap-to-click on my touchpad was enabled. Now, I understand a lot of people like this feature. I hate it. My hand rests on the touchpad in such a way that my thumb rests on the left mouse button. It doesn't take any more effort for me to click with my thumb, and sometimes I quickly touch the trackpad to move my cursor short distances, which often gets registered as a tap. Either way, I can't stand it.

Driver hacking is serious business!

Look what just made big news on engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/19/synaptics-driver-enables-multitouch-gestures-on-older-trackpads/

Old news for me... the guy that did this back in March of 2009 is the fellow who inspired me to try hacking my ELAN touch-pad drivers.

Guess I should get crackin', huh? Now that it's got media attention, someone is going to try beating me to cracking open the ELAN drivers!

UPDATE: Actually, I'm wrong. These are WHQL drivers released by HP that happen to have a set of hardware profiles in its .INF file that support just about every Synaptics multi-touch device. See my guide on hacking drivers for more info!

Current Project: Multi-touch on my laptop touch-pad...

I'm trying to hack a set of neutered touch-pad drivers to support multi-touch again. If you're interested, read past the break...