If you still have the happy little icon in your systray for the touch pad, right click it and go to properties,then select the tapping tab and click on the tap off while typing checkbox, if you do not have the icon in your systray...
I went with the LITEON DVD RW, so far so good. It works with everything i have thrown at it and for the cost of 165.00 you cant go wrong. Sure it isn't a Plextor or a Sony but it works flawless as far as i have seen
Last time i had to deal with a linux dual boot, all i did was set linux up with a boot disk and it worked fine, though that was with an older version Suse Linux.