mjhjmtu

I've recently switched from Ubuntu to Debian+Openbox on my ageing laptop. The minimalism is refreshing.

When I drag sideways with two fingers on the touchpad, this is interpreted as a horizontal scroll. Is there any way I can disable this?

Using xev I've identified that a two-finger horizontal drag is buttons 6 and 7. I've tried adding this line to .Xmodmap:

pointer = 1 2 3 5 4

which I hoped would implicitly unassign the horizontal scroll from buttons 6 and 7, but this hasn't worked.

Debian 9 should use the libinput driver by default (xserver-xorg-input-libinput), so I'm going with a solution for that one (see here).

Create a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf (create the directory if not existing) with the following content:

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf
Section "InputClass"
 Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
 MatchIsTouchpad "on"
 MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
 Driver "libinput"
 Option "HorizontalScrolling" "false"
EndSection

You can refer to the libinput man page for a detailed description of available configuration options.

If you are using the synaptics driver (xserver-xorg-input-synaptics), have a look at the relevant page of the debian wiki or the archlinux wiki, the solution is almost identical.

Same answer for a mouse

Here is an example that disable horizontal scroll (Save the new file and reboot)

nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput-mouse-left-right.conf

Section "InputClass"
 Identifier "Logitech catchall"
 MatchIsPointer "on"
 Driver "libinput"
 Option "HorizontalScrolling" "false"
EndSection

Other useful commands

xinput list
xinput list-props 15

Also xorg config file can be used to remap button

Section "InputClass"
 # ...
 Option "ButtonMapping" "1 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 2"
 # OR
 Option "ButtonMapping" "a b c d e f g h i"
 # ...
EndSection