If you own a laptop with Synaptics Touchpad, the right driver can make use of lots of nice features (e.g. horizontal, vertical and even circular scrolling).

To enable SHMConfig, create the file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi containing following lines:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>
  <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
   <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
  </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>

/etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi

<match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint">
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.ZAxsisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">true</merge>
</match>

For further configuration install Gsynaptics, it provides e.g. circular scrolling (engage scrolling and move finger (counter-)clockwise, to scroll until battery runs out of power)

sudo apt-get install gsynaptics

After installation Gsynaptics can be accessed via System → Einstellungen (Settings?) → Touchpad.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics_(Deutsch)

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
  Driver          "synaptics"
  Option          "SendCoreEvents"    "true"
  Option          "Device"            "/dev/psaux"
  Option          "Protocol"          "auto-dev"
  Option          "HorizEdgeScroll"   "true"
  Option          "HorizScrollDelta"  "100"
  Option          "CircularScrolling" "on"
  Option          "CircScrollTrigger" "8"
  Option          "SHMConfig"         "true"
EndSection

SHMConfig has to be enabled. The following commands should be typed in a terminal.

The -d option causes syndaemon to run in the background, so the terminal can be closed after executing the command.

syndaemon -d

The -t option causes syndaemon to only disable tapping and scrolling, not mouse movements:

syndaemon -d -t

By default syndaemon disables the touchpad for 2 seconds after the last keyboard activity. To specify a different timeout, use the -i option. For example, a timeout of 1 second:

syndaemon -d -i 1

Middle Mouse scroll: Ubuntu >= 10.04