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Disable touchpad in Linux

One of the first thing I do whenever I install a new OS is to disable the annoying touchpad on the laptop. I  don't know about other people, but my touchpad never lets me type a single sentence without moving the cursor to someplace I don't want.

The following works on Arch Linux. If your are using something else, your mileage may vary.

1) Find out the name of your touchpad device. Mine is "Elantech Touchpad".

bash $ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ RAPOO RAPOO 5G Wireless Device id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad id=15 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ RAPOO RAPOO 5G Wireless Device id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ USB 2.0 UVC VGA WebCam id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Asus WMI hotkeys id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=14 [slave keyboard (3)]

2) Replace "Your touchpad here" in the following script with the name of your touchpad device.

#!/bin/bash
if [ $(xinput --list-props "Your touchpad here" | grep Enabled | gawk -F ':' '{ print $2 }') -eq 1 ]; then
xinput --set-prop "Your touchpad here" "Device Enabled" 0
else
xinput --set-prop "Your touchpad here" "Device Enabled" 1
fi

3) Make the bash script executable, run it and add it to your autostart list.
 
chmod +x trackpad-toggle.sh

4) Note that it is a toggle script. You can also assign a specific key binding to toggle touchpad on or off.
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