If you have switched to KDE, especially Kubuntu or Fedora, then you might have to face the touchpad tapping issue.

In GNOME, it’s easy. You just have to enable tapping from System Settings -> Touchpad, but in KDE, in spite of doing this there have been cases reported where touchpad is not enabled. This is due to a bug, and we have to enable it manually.

This week at ‘This is How We Do It’, we have a guide on how to enable touchpad tapping in Linux KDE desktop environment.

  1. Open command line, or what we know as konsole in KDE distributions.
  2. Login as superuser by typing

    su

    You will be editing a system file so you need the administrator permissions.
    Now after you have the administrator permissions be careful while typing commands, because you could edit something with might damage your operating system.

  3. Use your favourite editor (I use emacs, you can use any) to open the file kcmtouchpadrc located at .kde/share/config/ by typing

    emacs -nw .kde/share/config/kcmtouchpadrc

    If you don’t know what is an editor then you can acces the file by typing

    vi .kde/share/config/kcmtouchpadrc


    vi is the editor that is installed by default on every linux based operating system.
    For more info about editors, look on the wiki.

  4. By default all the TapButton variables will be assigned the value 0.

    We have change the value of TapButton1 from 0 to 1.    

    If you are using vi then you first need to enable insert mode by typing

    i

    and after you have done the change you need to save the file by typing

    Esc key and then :wq

  5. Reboot your machine and its done.

If you have any problems regarding this do let us know in the comments below.

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