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Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

williambharding.com

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Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#311

Post by meuk »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #217
meuk wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm looking for a job in New Zealand, Australia, or Canada. Not Seattle (sorry Bill). I'd stop job hunting to work on this, so someone else will have to find me a job. I think letting someone else job hunt for you is unconventional for a reason (it's probably a bad idea).

Recruiters do exist, but that's not my idea. I'd rather that a project manager in one of those countries use this as a kind of long interview. If I succeed/work well with them, then they'd hire me.

I certainly wish you the best! A lot of people say they support Linux and open source, but are not willing to put significant effort in themselves (that includes me, to be honest).

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#312

Post by michaelmrose »

101km wrote: post #11

I have been using 12" MacBooks since they came out because I live out of a backpack and travel a lot. I cannot find anything comparable in terms of size/weight/battery and build quality. Especially the trackpad, nothing is remotely close. Otherwise I'd get that and put Arch on it. People complain Apple is expensive, not so sure. The TCO may actually be less because of the high resale value. It is also more convenient…

Compare

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-700-ser...

Looks like you get twice the ssd for the money and similar performance but you get a better screen on the apple. Of course you could of course spend more and get a model with a better screen as well.

1300 vs 700. Even if you get 25% resale value after 3 years and say 20% for the thinkpad you will have paid 975 vs 560 for the thinkpad.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#313

Post by kiaulen »

madeofpalk wrote: post #92
isostatic wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if you think you're moving the document, or moving the viewport. Touchscreen behaviour is touching the document and moving it up, while your view remains the same. Traditional scroll behavior is that you're moving the view of your document down while the document itself doesn't move. Either way, one method is "the original one", the other method is the opposite, or reversed, from the original method.

I don't really care either way - it's a setting so you can use what you prefer. But the default Apple 'moving the document' setting is extremely consistent with the rest of the trackpad. When you use one finger you move the cursor, not the viewport relative to the cursor. Why would it be different with two fingers?

For the same reason that controllers have both "normal" and "inverted". It's all in your point of view. Are you controlling like a mouse (up on the joystick looks up) or like a joystick (forward on the joystick is like tilting your head forward, and looks down).

For me, I hate the "natural" scrolling, because I map scrolling motions to "up" and "down". Moving my fingers downward should do what I think of as "down", which is to see what's below my current screen. I have an XPS 15 with the touchscreen, and only when you're actually touching the screen does "down moves the document down (and goes up toward the top)" make sense.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#314

Post by [deleted] »

syspec wrote: post #221
collyw wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do they do that is different? I had a Mac from 2013 with Ubuntu installed. I didn't notice anything different other than a lack of way to emulate a third button.

this whole thread is about getting the MacOS feel in linux when on mac hardeare becsuse it is not as good when hsed on linux. so what you tried is what this thread is trying to fix

[deleted]

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#315

Post by collyw »

syspec wrote: post #221
collyw wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do they do that is different? I had a Mac from 2013 with Ubuntu installed. I didn't notice anything different other than a lack of way to emulate a third button.

this whole thread is about getting the MacOS feel in linux when on mac hardeare becsuse it is not as good when hsed on linux. so what you tried is what this thread is trying to fix

So what is different? You still didn't answer that. Every time I tried a mac the scroll was upside down and it annoyed me. Now windows seems to have adopted that.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#316

Post by PascLeRasc »

mkirklions wrote: post #109
MrLeftHand wrote: post #81

One of the main reasons I stopped using Linux is the touchpad! It is horrible out of the box experience and the insult to injury is the lack of no good user interface to even set anything. You have to screw around with libinput or xinput with zero documentation on both parts and hope you will hit a sweet spot eventually and hope that any future updates won't break it. I am way past of the tinkerer phase where I would…

We are all talking about desktop? Ubuntu desktop is annoying IMO. Server is the only linux worth running. Windows has a superior desktop experience. Ive made serious attempts to use linux desktops since ubuntu 7 and the annoyance factor of getting things to 'work' and the hostile community is really offputting.

What did you think of Elementary OS?

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#317

Post by ksubedi »

tw04 wrote: post #305
rayiner wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be negative, but what makes you think you can do in two months what Microsoft has failed to do in several years (Microsoft's Precision Touchpad is still a ways away from a Mac touchpad).

The surface book touchpad is every bit as good as anything Apple has to offer. I owned 5 different macbook pro/airs prior to making the switch when the touchbar MBP came out. Comparing insert other hardware manufacturer and laying it on Microsoft isn't really fair... they have no control over what the hardware mfg's put in their laptops. And they can only fix so much in software when there are literally thousands of…

The surface book touchpad hardware itself might be as good as the trackpad in Macbook's but the software support in windows is not even close. Almost everything but UWP apps and some other first party windows apps have jittery scrolling even with the best trackpad hardware, which is not the case with mac apps.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#318

Post by tw04 »

ksubedi wrote: post #317
tw04 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surface book touchpad is every bit as good as anything Apple has to offer. I owned 5 different macbook pro/airs prior to making the switch when the touchbar MBP came out. Comparing insert other hardware manufacturer and laying it on Microsoft isn't really fair... they have no control over what the hardware mfg's put in their laptops. And they can only fix so much in software when there are literally thousands of…

The surface book touchpad hardware itself might be as good as the trackpad in Macbook's but the software support in windows is not even close. Almost everything but UWP apps and some other first party windows apps have jittery scrolling even with the best trackpad hardware, which is not the case with mac apps.

Either you've never used a surfacebook, or you've got faulty hardware, because that is 100% false. I spend exactly 0 seconds of my day in UWP apps.

There is absolutely 0 issues with jittery scrolling, and out of the 10 or so people I know with SBPs, not a single one has ever mentioned that as an issue. And given that everyone in my group that is on an SBP was previously on an MBP, those cries would be loud and frequent.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#319

Post by PascLeRasc »

ninkendo wrote: post #261
trash_panda wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this thread makes me wonder if I live in the same universe as HN. I'm amazed at the level of exquisiteness of the requirements of the HN crowd. I mean, I've been using computers all my life and used almost every Linux, Windows and OS X systems. I do get that Macbook touchpads are god-tier and unrivaled so far by other hardware manufacturers. That being said, I rather have my old Lenovo x220 with an external m…

> No touchpad is as good as a decent external mouse (decent != expensive, mine is $30). Funny, on both my work and home mac desktops, I use the Magic Touchpad as my primary input device even while sitting at a desk. So I suppose I disagree with this statement.

Agreed, I have nice "gaming" mice with perfect sensors but nothing can do horizontal scrolling to expand/collapse audio files in Logic.

Same with rotating in Preview and easy smooth zooming on webpages.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#320

Post by ahartmetz »

majewsky wrote: post #68
ahartmetz wrote: post #49

A cheap mouse allows finer and faster control than the best touchpad that currently exists, so... I plug in a mouse. (Don't believe me? Play an FPS game with touchpad against a mouse user.) That said, Synaptics touchpad support on Linux is bad. In my case, it's the touchpad on a Thinkpad T440s. It can run in a legacy/standard protocol mode or a "modern" protocol mode. Linux supposedly supports the latter (where palm…

> but I don't see it being used or palm detection working Where did you look? Some of that stuff needs to be enabled manually via the synaptics CLI or via xorg.conf, e.g. on my system: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/fec4e0...

IIRC I looked basically everywhere. I certainly did try to enable palm detection. The attempt I best remember was using some special synaptics settings GUIs (IIRC one standalone app and KDE synaptics settings). I touched xorg.conf for another purpose, configuring left / mid / right button zones. Right now, the T440s trackpad is configured for clicks and two-finger scrolling only because having movement enabled is a major nuisance without palm detection.

I'll try your configuration soon, too.

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