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How do I disable the pointing stick of a laptop (that mouse pointer in the middle of the keyboard)?

The only option available in the BIOS also disables the Touchpad, so it needs to be done from the OS.

 1 - Use xinput to identify the device

Example on a Dell Latitude E6410

xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech Logitech USB Optical Mouse id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad id=15 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Stick id=14 [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)]
 ↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_3M: In id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]

2 - Use xinput to disable the device

xinput -set-prop "AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Stick" "Device Enabled" 0

3 - Execute the command on startup

To disable it for all users (and for the graphical login window), one can run it as root on startup using cron. This is the preferred way if the trackpoint is broken and root privileges are granted on the machine.

Disabling as user may depend on the desktop environment.

Typically, one would put the command in a script

#!/bin/sh
xinput -set-prop "AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Stick" "Device Enabled" 0

make the script executable (chmod + x) and call it on startup.

It is absolutely equivalent to call the command line directly without writing it in a script. Just a matter of preference. The script is a nice way to record the command in case it would be accidentaly removed from the startup commands.

Source : Disabling the track stick in Ubuntu