Gfilui

I have a Dell Latitude XT, ancient piece of junk yes but I got it for free and I'd like to use it as a drawing tablet.

Anyway I would like to disable finger touch on the screen so it only accepts input from the pen. All I've been finding is commands for Wacom pads and I don't have one of those.

xsetwacom --list devices
N-Trig Pen stylus id: 9 type: STYLUS 
N-Trig Pen stylus id: 11 type: STYLUS 
N-Trig Pen eraser id: 17 type: ERASER 
N-Trig Pen pad id: 18 type: PAD 
N-Trig Pen eraser id: 19 type: ERASER 
N-Trig Pen pad id: 20 type: PAD 

When I try to set the touch off I get this.

xsetwacom set _18_ touch off
Cannot find device '_18_'.

Basically I don't even know how the find what the pen and touch devices are on this computer and how to disable the touch function.

Ratler and Tudor were both mostly right.
xinput --list

gives me

Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ N-Trig Pen stylus id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ N-Trig Touchscreen id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ N-Trig Pen stylus id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ N-Trig Touchscreen id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Stick id=15 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ N-Trig Pen eraser id=17 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ N-Trig Pen pad id=18 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ N-Trig Pen eraser id=19 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ N-Trig Pen pad id=20 [slave pointer (2)]

I opted to Disable "N-Trig Touchscreen" but since I have two devices with the designation I used:

xinput --disable 10

Now finger touch does nothing but the pen still functions.

I don't have Wacom or N-Trig, so things might be different for you, but here's something you can try.

First, from what I can see, Wacom and N-Trig are different, and N-Trig is only related to active pens, so this might be why you don't see anything relevant in your output.

In any case, try using xinput from a terminal window (assuming you're running X Window System) to list your devices.

$ xinput --list

If it's not obvious which one is finger touch (in my case, it's "ELAN Touchscreen"), you can test the ones you suspect with

$ xinput --test [device_name]

(Remember to use quotes if there are spaces; e.g., "ELAN Touchscreen". You can also use the id number, but I prefer using the full name, particularly if using the command in a script, because the id might not always be the same.)

Once you enter that command, xinput will go into test mode and will display registered signals from the device you designated. If you touch the screen with your finger and see activity, you have the right device. You can exit test mode with Ctrl+C.

To disable the device, you can use

$ xinput --disable [device_name]

and re-enable it later with

$ xinput --enable [device_name]

as required.