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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?

#111

Post by zbentley »

beaconstudios wrote: post #89
ramijames wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell me more about "curl-to-bash"? Setting up my mac can be a matter of days and I hate it.

I think they mean the classic install process of "curl -s | bash", used to download and then execute a bash script. The real question in my opinion is what kind of tools can fully set up an entire environment, including sessions, from a bash script? Homebrew only gets you so far.

Some of the old Boxen libraries (Puppet automation for things generally outside of the "run a command to install" area--like complex OS configuration and per-application setting installation) plus a bit of bash and a few Hammerspoon scripts gets me working. It's not pretty, but usually means the only things I have to do manually are install XCode and log into a few accounts (unless I'm changing hardware types or OSX vesions).

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

#112

Post by mkirklions »

opdahl wrote: post #2

If someone could actually make this, I would gladly pay an annual subscription to access it. Almost the only reason I'm still buying MacBooks is because of the touchpad, and if I could get that on Linux I probably would just switch to a normal PC.

Who is on this website?

I thought these were mostly programmers, but I cannot picture a programmer using a touchpad instead of a mouse.

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

#113

Post by ToFab123 »

Microsoft did it and wrote a driver that makes a PC touchpad just as amazing as the one you find on a MacBook. There is a world as different between using that driver and the standard synaptics driver most laptops ships with. For sure you want the same on a Linux box.

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

#114

Post by martin_ »

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…

I've been using a 13" MBP for years, and am almost astounded by how much I take it, and its trackpad for granted from reading this thread. Also-- Would love it if you could share an example of the bash you execute to restore everything right up to the sessions (redacted where necessary)!

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

#115

Post by tbrock »

micheljansen wrote: post #29

The touchpad experience of the Mac is where vertical integration really shines. The touchpad is so good precisely because there are not hundreds of hardware variants to support. Just the one that Apple used in their past X years of MacBooks (so never more than a hand-full). And they make their own OS and drivers. Doing this for all laptops Linux could possibly run on is almost impossible. It’s a shame that touchpad (…

There cannot be THAT many different touch pads or drivers for them out there that this is impossible. I bet there are only three or four types of main brands at most which probably all come from the same factory in China.

It’s not like every time a new pc laptop comes out the dell and HP folks say: “Yee haw! Roll up yer sleeves boys, it’s time to write another touchpad driver!” That’s just insanity.

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

#117

Post by systoll »

altano wrote: post #61
isostatic wrote: post #3

Am I the only one who prefers the nipples on thinkpads?

I love them when doing programming that requires my fingers to rarely leave the keyboard. It's nice to be able to nudge the mouse here or there occasionally without having the context switch of moving my fingers completely off the keyboard.

To me this was the big benefit of the pressure-sensitive MacBook trackpad —- since clicking is just pressing harder, you can use it with a thumb while your fingers are on the home row.

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

#118

Post by mikemcquaid »

beaconstudios wrote: post #89
ramijames wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell me more about "curl-to-bash"? Setting up my mac can be a matter of days and I hate it.

I think they mean the classic install process of "curl -s | bash", used to download and then execute a bash script. The real question in my opinion is what kind of tools can fully set up an entire environment, including sessions, from a bash script? Homebrew only gets you so far.

Apologies for the self-plug but this is what I built for GitHub to do exactly this: https://github.com/MikeMcQuaid/strap. Add Homebrew Bundle and a Dotfiles repo into the mix and you get what was described. This is obviously pretty Homebrew and GitHub centric because I work on both.

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

#119

Post by dvirsky »

I have an Apple Magic Trackpad 2 attached to my Linux workstation, and configured using synaptics and a custom kernel driver. The experience is almost good, but not quite there.

The most annoying thing is scroll zoom in some apps (mostly Chrome), that makes hitting ctrl while the trackpad is "coasting", result in zooming to oblivion. I've sort of solved it with a chrome extension that disabled scroll zooming.

But in general it just doesn't feel as smooth and took a lot of time tinkering with to get to reasonable results.

I'll gladly contribute a bit to a kickstarter or something.

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

#120

Post by rahoulb »

mkirklions wrote: post #112
opdahl wrote: post #2

If someone could actually make this, I would gladly pay an annual subscription to access it. Almost the only reason I'm still buying MacBooks is because of the touchpad, and if I could get that on Linux I probably would just switch to a normal PC.

Who is on this website? I thought these were mostly programmers, but I cannot picture a programmer using a touchpad instead of a mouse.

Really?

Why not?

Why would you use a mouse if you're on a laptop? Especially a macbook, where the trackpad is fantastic to use and offers gestures which give you features you don't get with a mouse.

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