Comment 7 for bug 177373

For sake of clarity, I'm adding additional information. With the default setup, the touchpad does work. But it creates erratic jumping, which is a pain when typing text, forcing the user to constantly go back and correct if they are touch typists (i.e. don't watch the screen when typing). This is why it's important the touchpad be identified within the xorg system, because then the touchpad tab is visible in gnome-mouse-properties. Then the touchpad doubleclick functionality can be disabled, which prevents the erratic mouse movements.

Further experimentation shows that both the "Synaptics Touchpad" InputDevice section, and related entry in ServerLayout are required for the "Touchpad" tab to be created in gnome-mouse-properties. The ServerLayout section is also not created by the default system, and must be created.