unwanted taps on trackpad while typing

a common problem for laptops.
what to do?

see

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InstallingUbuntuOnADellXPSM1530#Touchpad stays on while typing

Touchpad stays on while typing

To fix this, the best answer I could find was this one, where you simply install a deb package to add a file to the Xsession.d directory, which gets run every time your start X. Here's are contents:

# Starts the Synaptic daemon which deactivates the touchpad while typing
# This executes for all users

SYNDAEMON=/usr/bin/syndaemon
SYN_IDLE=1  #Seconds to wait after last key press before enabling touchpad

if [ -x $SYNDAEMON ]; then
 $SYNDAEMON -i $SYN_IDLE -d
fi

This is a very simple and elegant way to fix the problem. Click here to download the package directly.

dpkg -L xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

includes this program:

syndaemon - a program that monitors keyboard activity and disables the
touchpad when the keyboard is being used.