Whatever their other faults, Macs are the only computers with trackpads worth a shit.
Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
211–220 of 347 posts
Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry for being off-topic, but I can't resist asking why on Earth would you want to port iTunes and AppleScript? Everyone I know (except the HN user actsasbuffoon) loathes iTunes, while AppleScript is just... silly, compared to other scripting languages.
I miss the old iTunes 10 interface, which I use as a database manager (I like smart playlists, playlist folders, and Genre > Artist > Album columns). AppleScript because it has so many APIs. BetterTouchTool makes heavy use of it. I taught myself how to code in it when I was 13, and I still use it now.
> I like smart playlists, playlist folders, and Genre > Artist > Album columns
Doesn't Rhythmbox have that?
Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
#213Am I the only one who prefers the nipples on thinkpads?
No, but I can't get the nipple on my t430 to be as precise as it is on Windows. To quick for small movements or too slow for big ones.
Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
#214I'll volunteer 2 months full-time development for free, with a few conditions. - 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'd develop for the MacBook Pro 2014, because that's my hardware. Only one Linux distro (probably Ubuntu). - Weekly check-in emails (maybe twice a week). A plan set out…
> 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).
Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
#215Am I the only one who prefers the nipples on thinkpads?
If it works and you got used to it, it is so great on the integrated display. I got so used to not leaving the home row, I get annoyed when I have to use the arrow keys. My X220 nipple unfortunately became a little unreliable. Needs calibration often (auto moving cursor) and sometimes one direction works better than others. It's annoying, especially since the touchpad is just unusable. Any suggestions? Hardware or so…
Its probably a hardware issue. I worked at IBM and they were very proud of that device that was invented there. They had a little glass display with the hardware broken out and prototypes.
It works with strain gauges[1]. Thats why you can control the speed of the pointer, not just the direction. When you get used to it, its quite effective.
You can pull the rubber nub off and try it, that shouldn't help but it might. If its sticking in a position that isn't "Neutral"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick
Oddly IBM made a mouse with that nub pointer thing. It worked so much better that any sort of wheel for pointing and scrolling, but I left it when I left IBM many many moons ago.
Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
#216I'll volunteer 2 months full-time development for free, with a few conditions. - 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'd develop for the MacBook Pro 2014, because that's my hardware. Only one Linux distro (probably Ubuntu). - Weekly check-in emails (maybe twice a week). A plan set out…
Sorry for being off-topic, but I can't resist asking why on Earth would you want to port iTunes and AppleScript? Everyone I know (except the HN user actsasbuffoon) loathes iTunes, while AppleScript is just... silly, compared to other scripting languages.
I like iTunes, I don't understand why people hate it.
Applescript is silly in some respects. It was the first scripting language I learned so it has a special place in my heart. I would totally spend the time to port that if someone was wanting help with that. It's quirky and not difficult to pick up. I can't imagine it having much of a market outside of the Mac ecosystem though. I guess I'm also curious why.
Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
#217I'll volunteer 2 months full-time development for free, with a few conditions. - 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'd develop for the MacBook Pro 2014, because that's my hardware. Only one Linux distro (probably Ubuntu). - Weekly check-in emails (maybe twice a week). A plan set out…
> 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.
Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I feel your pain. Ubuntu Desktop was my preferred go to distro not too long ago. Using 16.10 was nice and I managed to get the touchpad working in a reasonable way with xinput. Then 18 came along and everything went to hell. All the properties changed and some even disappeared. And of course the ones missing were the ones I actually needed to make my touchpad work in a way that it was comfortable to use. After that I…
One baffling design decision Canonical made for 18 is defaulting some touchpads (ones without separate buttons) to "two finger click for right click", even though so many touchpads have a clicky area and even lines printed on the touchpad for right click.
That's not the baffling part though, the baffling part is that they didn't put an option in the control panel to return the old behavior. You have to spin up dconf and find the right bit to twiddle to get the old behavior back. How is this user friendly?
This is like 14 when they hid menu items by default (and replace them with absolutely nothing at all) causing newbies to be very confused as to how to use their apps. It only took a few times of very confused users being totally lost because they forgot they had to move their mouse up to the top to make the menu items reappear before I tracked down the dconf setting to turn it back on. It wasn't until 16 that they exposed that in the control panel, but even then it defaulted to "uselessly hide".
Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
#219I'll volunteer 2 months full-time development for free, with a few conditions. - 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'd develop for the MacBook Pro 2014, because that's my hardware. Only one Linux distro (probably Ubuntu). - Weekly check-in emails (maybe twice a week). A plan set out…
I would be amazed if someone is going to be willing to find you a job because you decided to work on some OSS. However, having a project like this to talk about is great interview material.
As for actually building this, I'd be very excited to see this being worked on. It's going to need a lot of different hardware to test with, so the more people working on it the better.
Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
#220Instead of starting a new project from scratch, why not reanimate synaptics and fix the annoying bugs? Are there licensing issues? Is it not open source? Or is there some underlying technical problem that makes this hard/unfeasible?