I briefly tried an Arch Linux install on my laptop. It wasn’t my favorite for my daily use, would probably be great for a lightweight computer or a server. In any case, the default configuration (non-) settings for the clickpad were utterly unusable, and the examples I was finding didn’t have all of the features I wanted. I dug into the man pages for the driver and put together a configuration I’m happy with, and have since rolled out to my Ubuntu 16.04 install on the same machine.
These settings enable the soft-buttons at the top of the clickpad to use with the trackpoint, creates another soft-button on the right half of the bottom of the pad for right click, disables edge scrolling, enables two-finger scrolling (horizontal and vertical), and single/double/triple-finger clicking.
This file lives (in a 16.04 Ubuntu system) in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ . I replaced the default 50-synaptics.conf file with the following contents:
Section "InputClass" Identifier "touchpad" Driver "synaptics" MatchIsTouchpad "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Option "ClickPad" "1" Option "PalmDetect" "1" #soft buttons at top of pad Option "SoftButtonAreas" "60% 0 0 2400 40% 60% 0 2400" Option "AreaTopEdge" "2400" #soft buttons at bottom of pad Option "HasSecondarySoftButtons" "1" Option "SecondarySoftBUttonAreas" "50% 0 85% 0 0 0 0 0" Option "HorizHysteresis" "30" Option "VertHysteresis" "30" Option "FingerLow" "30" Option "FingerHigh" "50" Option "MinSpeed" "1" Option "MaxSpeed" "1" Option "AccelerationProfile" "2" Option "ConstantDeceleration" "4" Option "VertEdgeScroll" "0" Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "0" Option "TapAndDragGesture" "0" Option "CircularScrolling" "0" Option "TapButton1" "1" Option "TapButton2" "3" Option "TapButton3" "2" Option "ClickFinger1" "1" Option "ClickFinger2" "3" Option "ClickFinger3" "2" Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1" Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1" Option "CoastingSpeed" "0" Option "MaxTapTime" "125" EndSection